Pakistan’s campaign is over and, by their own captain’s admission, it never really got going. “If you look at the whole tournament and I had to sum it up, we underperformed,” Salman Agha said late on Saturday, moments after a five-run win in Colombo that still sent his men out of the T20 World Cup.
The equation was simple, if hardly straightforward. Pakistan had to beat Sri Lanka by 65 runs, having piled up 212 for 8. Anything less and New Zealand, superior on net run rate, would sneak into the semi-finals. Dasun Shanaka’s muscular 68 from 31 balls made sure the margin never threatened that mark. Sri Lanka finished on 207 for 9; Pakistan were out, and everyone in the ground seemed to know it long before the last ball was bowled.
Agha did not hide behind small print. “Our middle order never performed, and we over-relied on Sahibzada [Farhan] for our runs.” The numbers back him up. Farhan’s 104 on Saturday pushed his tournament tally to 383, eclipsing Virat Kohli’s previous record for a single edition. The next best Pakistani is Shadab Khan with 118. One man scoring, ten men hoping – it was never sustainable.
The innings itself was a snapshot of broader issues. Fakhar Zaman, unused until this game, opened with Farhan and the pair raced to 176 without loss. Then came an extraordinary collapse: eight wickets for 34 in four overs. No one beyond the openers reached double figures. Agha, in at No. 3, lasted two balls for nought. “It was difficult for a new batter to come in and start striking on that surface,” he argued, though the admission rang a little hollow given the early freedom shown by both openers.
Selection has been questioned throughout the tournament. Babar Azam’s stuttering form in the middle order prompted debate, and the handling of Abrar Ahmed bemused even senior players. Dropped after an off-colour night against India, the leg-spinner returned here and promptly took 3 for 23 – best figures on either side. Privately, some within the camp wondered if he had been judged too quickly on “nerve”.
Agha tried to spread accountability. “We take responsibility,” he said. “We look at conditions and the situation required before selecting our playing XI as captain and coach together. I take responsibility, as does the coach. We will have to improve our decision-making under pressure. There will always be pressure in ICC events, because you are playing the world’s best teams. And every game is important because if you lose one, you feel on the brink of elimination.”
Mike Hesson, the head coach, echoed that view earlier in the week. “You don’t win World Cups without cool heads,” he remarked, pointing out that mis-fields and no-balls had cost Pakistan at least two group matches. The New Zealander, experienced with franchise sides, is understood to have a review meeting pencilled in before the squad disperses for the domestic season.
Agha himself is sitting on 50 T20Is as captain. Asked if he would continue, he preferred delay. “I don’t want to make any emotional calls,” he said, hinting that a cooling-off period – and a chat with selectors – will come first. The Pakistan Cricket Board, for its part, has announced no timetable for changes, but history suggests poor World Cups rarely pass without some reshuffle.
Beyond Farhan’s run-glut, positives were slim. Shaheen Shah Afridi bowled with pace but little luck, and Mohammad Wasim’s figures of 2 for 47 against Sri Lanka were average on a night when everyone travelled. Fielding, a long-standing concern, is likely to top the post-mortem agenda; at least three catches went down across key matches, each seemingly more costly than the last.
Former captain Misbah-ul-Haq, working as a television pundit, summed it up bluntly: “The pieces never fitted together. One day the bowling went wrong, the next day the batting. In tournaments, you just don’t have the margin for that.”
The tournament will, however, be remembered for Farhan. His ability to pick lengths early and access straight boundaries was a feature throughout. Shanaka, asked about the hundred he had watched from cover point, smiled: “Pure striking. We tried to take pace off; he waited on everything. You tip your hat.”
For Sri Lanka, victory would have been a proper consolation on a tough campaign of their own, yet even the defeat had an upside: it ensured hometown spectators left talking about Shanaka’s fireworks rather than a flat finish.
Pakistan fly home on Monday, a long tour finally wrapped. The players will scatter to county stints, the CPL and, in some cases, a fortnight’s rest. Over coffee at the National High Performance Centre in Lahore, selectors will no doubt pore over strike-rates, dot-ball percentages and boundary counts. They may also, quietly, revisit Agha’s admission: when the heat was on, “our decision-making is not as good as it should be”.
No dramatic overhaul is promised, yet those words are unlikely to be forgotten.
