News

Rain seals Pakistan's exit

Match Report: Agha Akbar, Pak v Zim WC 2003

Agha Akbar
04-Mar-2003
In two crucial World Cup games on successive days, the weather gods had the final say, knocking South Africa, England and Pakistan out of contention for the Super Six. On Monday night at Durban, the Proteas were at the receiving end, and on Tuesday morning intermittent rain forced the abandonment of Pakistan's crucial encounter here at Queens Sports Club against Zimbabwe, which gifted the hosts two points to allow them to pip England for the third Super Six slot from Pool A.
It is an irony of fate that two African teams - Kenya and Zimababwe, one from each pool - have gone to the next round, but neither is South Africa, who hoped to be the first side ever to win a World Cup at home. High levels of expectation and unrealistic optimism have again done for a home side.
Pakistan's task was steep anyway, and there was too much rancour and instability in their eleven to to achieve it. But the rain reduced the match to a farce anyway, eventually forcing its abandonment after a delayed start and two interruptions, the last coming when Pakistan were 73 for three after 14 overs, with Saeed Anwar unbeaten at 40.
Though Zimbabwe were fortunate to qualify without beating a front line cricketing nation, Pakistan were left to lick their wounds. They too had a dismal failure - not beating any of their three worthwhile rivals, and managing only scrappy wins against minnows.
It will remain a point of conjecture whether they would have done any better had rain not deprived them of another two points, and afforded them a late opportunity to beat England on net run-rate. But the fact is that though Anwar stuck around until the final interruption, Pakistan had lost three batsmen rather cheaply.
Yousuf Youhana made just 17 and Inzamam-ul-Haq three. Inzamam, Pakistan's premier batsmen, made the sum total of 19 runs in six innings. That was plumbing the depths, but it pretty much sums up the performance of the big guns - most of them failed to fire throughout the tournament, and never when it mattered.
There will be explanations and excuses for Pakistan's premature exit, but it was not unexpected from a fractious outfit in which everyone was for himself and none for the team.
Mercifully the whole sorry business is over. A few prima donnas who held the cricketing destiny of the nation hostage in the last decade will be gone. It is a shame that they are going of their own will; many feel they should have been forced out a long time ago.
And if tomorrow comes for the present set-up in the PCB (again a moot point for no Pakistani Board has survived a World Cup failure in the previous two instances - that is, post-1996 and post-1999), it will need to sit down and do a lot of soul-searching before rebuilding a strong team from scratch.