Quote from: Sithara007 on Today at 02:17:47 AM

Quote from: Swordsoffreedom on Today at 12:05:08 AM

I agree with you. Batting first, Pakistan set a target of 283 runs. And that was enough to win. But opponent Afghanistan batted well today. Every batsman in the top order played very well. We can blame the Pakistan bowlers, but when the opposition batsmen are batting very responsibly, it becomes much more difficult for the bowlers to pick up wickets.
Pakistan squad does not have good spin bowlers, this is their weakness. Apart from Afridi, other pace bowlers are not doing very well. And crucially Pakistan's fielding was poor. I would say this is one of the reasons for their defeat. We have seen Pakistan's fielding bad against Australia as well. This team really needs to improve their fielding. They have to be more diligent.

LOL.. I don't think that 282 is a decent total at Chepauk. Abdullah Shafique and Babar Azam gave Pakistan a decent start. But the middle order batsmen could not use that as a launching pad and wasted a lot of balls during the depth overs. Saud Shakeel and Shadab Khan failed to accelerate and only Iftikhar Ahmed towards the end boosted the run rate with a few boundaries. Even then, a total of above 300 would have been decent. For Afghanistan Noor Ahmad was the pick of the bowlers, and he picked up 3 crucial wickets and made sure that Pakistan doesn't manage to cross 300.

Pakistan's batting was very slow from the beginning of the innings. Abdullah Shafique's strike rate was 77 and Babar Azam's strike rate was 80. Despite batting at such a bad strike rate, Pakistan managed to collect 282 runs. Iftikhar did not play the innings of 40 runs off 27 balls, maybe the team could not have given the target of 260 runs. Pakistan mustered just 139 runs in 30 overs, losing three wickets. On the other hand, Afghanistan's collection was 175 runs with the loss of 1 wicket in 30 overs. Afghanistan batsmen played very well. Afghanistan's batsmen took full advantage of Pakistan's weak bowling. At the same time, they batted at a smart strike rate. If the bowlers did well, the Pakistan team would have been able to win the target of 283 runs. Although the Afghanistan spin bowlers bowled very controlled, the Pakistan spin bowlers gave away a lot of runs.