Batting trips up Pakistan again

Pakistan's bowlers have long been accustomed to making up for the deficiencies of their batsmen, but it was a bridge too far even for their talented pace and spin attack in the Champions Trophy, as Pakistan crashed out of the tournament with two defeats, both largely because of batting failures. Against West Indies they scored only 170, and against South Africa they meekly folded up for 167 when chasing 235. Their match against India should have been one of the key games of the Champions Trophy; instead, the only significance in the context of the tournament might be to determine India's ranking in the group.

Batting letting Pakistan down has been a recurring theme in their cricket, especially in the last few years. That's clear from the table below, which lists the overall win-loss ratios and the batting numbers for each team against the top eight sides (excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). India have the best batting average, run rate, and win-loss ratio (64 wins, 37 losses), which reinforces the fact that batsmen shape the results of ODIs more than bowlers do. Pakistan, on the other hand, languish at No. 8 in terms of average and run rate. Even Bangladesh have a higher average, though, along with Zimbabwe, they are the only one with a lower run rate.

As a bowling unit, Pakistan are outstanding - they average 31.70 per wicket, and concede 4.95 runs per over. In terms of average, only South Africa and Australia have done better, while they are the only side to concede less than five an over. Their bowling's the reason Pakistan's win-loss ratio is the sixth-best, despite their batting stats being eighth. However, they still score at a slower rate than they concede runs (4.80 to 4.95), and score fewer runs per wicket than they concede. Despite Pakistan's wonderful bowling, they still languish among the second lot of teams in terms of their win-loss ratio, well below those of India, South Africa, Australia, England and Sri Lanka.

In terms of batting averages, Pakistan's is 27% below India's, which is a significant difference even after allowing for the fact that they have played many of their matches in the UAE, where conditions aren't the most favourable for batsmen looking for quick runs. The last column of the table above illustrates one of the problems with their batting: their inability to score centuries, and convert their fifties into something more substantial. India's batsmen have scored 41 hundreds in 109 matches, an average of roughly one every two and a half games; they have also scored 41 hundreds out of 175 fifty-plus scores, which means roughly once out of four times a half-century has been converted into a century. South Africa's conversion is similar, while they have scored a hundred once in three games.

Pakistan's ratios are much poorer: 14 centuries in 82 matches works out to an average of one in six games. They have also gone past fifty 99 times in these matches, of which only 14 have been converted into hundreds, a ratio of one in seven. That's about as good as Australia's ratio, but Australia have had many more 50-plus scores - 184 in 116 matches, or 1.6 per match - than Pakistan, which has made up for the fact that their conversion rate isn't as good as India's or South Africa's.

A look at the individual batsmen reveals the culprits, or at least some of them. All the numbers below are also against the top sides, and among those who have scored at least 500 runs against them, only Misbah-ul-Haq and Nasir Jamshed have 400-plus averages. (Click here for the full list.) Misbah's strike rate, though, is only 69, which is clearly below average. That's partly because he has often had to rebuild after the team has lost quick wickets, but it's still an aspect of his game which has been questioned. The impressive Jamshed has a healthy strike rate of 77, while the only other top-order batsman who has combined a reasonable average with a good strike rate is Umar Akmal. Mohammad Hafeez averages 31, but you'd want more from a batsman who usually opens the innings and gets the opportunity to bat long periods.

The rest have been pretty ordinary: Younis Khan batted as many as 58 innings and averaged less than 23, Shoaib Malik has averaged less than 24, while Asad Shafiq has managed five half-centuries in 29 innings at a strike rate of less than 70.

A common problem for most of the Pakistan batsmen is obvious from the last column of the table below: their high dot-ball percentage. It's normal for the openers to have a slightly higher dot-ball factor because of the number of fielders within the circle, but good middle-order players should have a percentage of less than 50. AB de Villiers has a percentage of 40, Suresh Raina 46, Michael Hussey 44, Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni 48. However, the table below shows that all Pakistan batsmen save Shahid Afridi have a dot-ball percentage of more than 50. In fact, for most of them it's around 55 or more. Among the batsmen in the list below, Misbah, Shafiq, Younis and Malik all bat usually in the middle order, and all of them have dot-ball percentages in the mid-50s.

All of this analysis doesn't even include Imran Farhat, whose place in the Champions Trophy squad has come under plenty of scrutiny. Farhat averages 30.69 from 58 ODIs over a career which has stretched 12 years, but in overseas or neutral venues it drops further to 27.13, at a strike rate of 67. In the period in question, and against the top sides, Farhat has averaged 29.26 at a strike rate of 67 - which isn't worse than most of his team-mates - scoring 439 in 15 innings. He hasn't been a regular in the last few years, but what probably prompted his selection for the Champions Trophy was his 93 against South Africa in Durban earlier this year. His summer performances have been awful though: in five innings he has scored 64, and that includes three games against Scotland and Ireland. Like all the other Pakistan batsmen, Farhat has struggled with the dot balls too - his percentage since 2009 is 62.16, the highest among the lot.

Breaking up the 50-over innings into three bits, it's clear that Pakistan tend to lose plenty of ground at the start of their innings: they average 28.69 at a run rate of 4.07 and a dot-ball percentage of more than 70, all of which are much poorer than most of the other top sides. Their numbers in the middle overs are reasonable, but they haven't finished particularly well either, an area which used to be their strength once upon a time. All of this has put plenty of pressure on their bowlers to perform the rescue act, and while they've done that on several occasions, the Champions Trophy wasn't one of them.