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Ireland hope to add to Pakistan’s World Cup worries
- Updated: August 17, 2016
“When we walked out on to the field there was a group of Pakistani supporters on the right-hand side and they were giving us all sorts of stick – ‘You should be back in the pub and you should be drinking Guinness celebrating St Patrick’s Day. You don’t play cricket’.”
So Ireland captain Trent Johnston later recalled of St Patrick’s Day 2007. By the end of the day, Johnston’s match-clinching six out of Sabina Park had knocked Pakistan out of the World Cup – and proved to them, and the world, that Ireland do indeed play cricket.
Now Pakistan go to Ireland with the World Cup on their minds: not the ghosts of 2007, but 2019. While the contraction of the World Cup to ten teams is viewed exclusively as an Associate issue, one consequence is that, for the first time ever, Pakistan are in danger of missing out on the World Cup.
For all the buoyancy surrounding their magnificent Test win at The Oval, Pakistan lie in ninth position in the ODI rankings, seven points behind West Indies. If that does not change before September 30 next year, Pakistan will be forced into a cut-throat qualifying tournament, in which only two of the ten competing sides will progress to the 2019 World Cup. For now, the criticism of one-day internationals as lacking context does not apply to Pakistan.
That Pakistan’s World Cup participation is in jeopardy at the very moment when they are on the brink of becoming the No. 1 Test nation in the world only serves to accentuate the differences in their performances across the two formats of the game. They have lost their last five ODIs.
“We can improve our ranking: we know we’re far better than where we’re ranked at the moment,” one-day captain Azhar Ali said. “There are a lot of reasons behind our one-day performances. We’ve lost a lot of experienced players in the recent past. The youngsters are coming in and need a bit of time to get settled. We need a bit of consistency in selection – we have to back the guys who are coming into the squad. In the last few years we didn’t perform to all aspects of the game.”
Pakistan’s bowling remains a potent force in ODI cricket. But in their athleticism in the field, and, …
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