Why Pakistan lost the Hutch Cup ODI Series

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and so am I, so whatever is posted below is simply my personal view as to why I think Pakistan lost the series.

Pakistan has never had an exceptional batting line up, let alone a consistent one with the exception of Inzamam. There have been instances when there have been some remarkable contributions from Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf, Salman Butt, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi and Kamran Akmal. Of course, if you observe closely, apart from Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, none of the other batsmen can be qualified as full-time, middle order batsmen. Generally, a team would expect it's opening batsmen to provide a solid foundation, which can be built upon by the incoming middle order. However, apart from the dependable partnership between Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail, Pakistan has always had it's fair share of worries as far as a concrete opening stand is concerned.

Due to this lack of uniformity in performances by the opening batsmen in the Pakistani squad, the middle order is immediately exposed to a fairly new ball to which they may be susceptible, depending on several factors such as the moisture, pitch conditions, etc. During the Hutch Cup series, nearly every pitch the two teams played on were featherbed tracks, i.e., ideal fpr batting conditions, and a deathbed for bowlers. These pitches did offer some assistance to spinner (finger spinners mostly), however, they were equally unfriendly to most spinners.

In all but the first match, India had batted second, when the moisture had dropped, and any help that the bowlers may be able to extract from the turf had immaterialized. Given India's past record of chasing, it was no surprise that they were able to do so in all of the last four matches, on perfect batting wickets. Not to take away any credit from India, but the manner in which Pakistan commenced it's run chase in the first ODI was simply marvelous, given their batting inconsistencies and bad record of chasing totals, especially such monumental ones.

With the absence of the spearhead of their bowling attack speedster, Shoaib Akhtar, there was little that Rana Naved and Mohammad Sami could do. Do keep in mind that Rana had hardly recovered from a shoulder injury and Sami had been rested for a considerable period of time. Furthermore, what added to Sami's woes was the fact that he had been sick the day he was summoned for the fourth ODI. As asking bowlers recovering from injuries and sicknesses to bowl on completely dead pitches is quite simply, asking for trouble.

With all these factors combined, a major blow was yet to come, which was the injury of Shahid Afridi. Afridi was courageous, yet irrational enough to play while suffering from a rib cage injury, which may explain his horrific performances - risking a single that was never there, and lofting the ball sky high for no apparent reason. Whatever the reason may have been, the Pakistani team definitely felt the absence of these key players. Quite possibly the biggest factor, apart from Dravid's strategic decision making, was the fact that Inzamam, who has for years served as the spine for Pakistan's batting order failed to consolidate in most of his innings. Dravid was my pick of the series, for putting in a fantastic performance this time not so much with the bat, but with his tactics that resulted in the eventual downfall of the Pakistani team in the last four matches.

There will be copious excuses for every lost series, but I believe the factors mentioned above played a major role in Pakistan's ODI defeat. As far as the Test series was concerned, both sides were equally brilliant in the first two tests, but Pakistan managed to hold their nerves, making an astonishing return going down 0 for the loss of three to 39 for the loss of 6 to an eventual victory by a staggering margin of 341 runs.

Finally, not to take credit away from the Indians, it was an electrifying series as it always is when these two sides meet, and at the end, the Indians performed fabulously to emphatically take away the ODI series. Similarly, Pakistan brilliantly romped to victory in the deciding Test match and ultimately won the Test series.