Be wary of Pakistan, Bollinger tells Aussies

Pakistan were thrashed by 110 runs by New Zealand here on Tuesday night Aussie but paceman Doug Bollinger believes Shahid Afridi’s men are still one of the most dangerous teams at World Cup 2011.

Bollinger, who was a part of Australia’s original World Cup squad but was sent back home because of an ankle injury, urged his team to be wary of Pakistan when the two sides meet in their last Pool A game in Colombo on March 19.

“Absolutely we should be wary of Pakistan,” said Bollinger. “I think they’ve played really well. Shahid Afridi is leading really well and I think Pakistan have to be seen as one of the favourites to perform.”

Bollinger lamented the fact that fitness problems ruled him out of what would have been his first World Cup. “To come home because of an injury was heartbreaking,” he said.

“It was my first World Cup and watching them play the other night it was hurting to know I had to watch them from home. There’s not much I can do about (the injury). I’ve just got to try to take a few weeks off and see how I go, see how my foot pulls up.

“It’s obviously a shame and I’d love to be there with the guys.”

Australia have replaced Bollinger with Michael Hussey, a seasoned batsman. The move has raised quite a few eyebrows but Bollinger believes it’s a good decision.

“I think it’s great, I think he’d be very happy and hope he goes well.

If he gets a game, I hope he goes well. He’s one of the senior players, he’s a great one-day player and he’s got a lot of experience as well, so he’ll be great to have around the squad,” he concluded.

Can't press the panic button, says Afridi

 Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi is a worried man after the 110-run loss to New Zealand and is using the five-day gap to regroup the side ahead of their World Cup Group A clash on Monday against Zimbabwe.

Pakistan made a good start in the tournament but fumbled on their way to a 46-run win over Canadalast week and then crashed to a huge defeat against New Zealand. A win against Zimbabwe will assure them of a berth in the last eight.

"We are worried because the team hasn't played well in the last two matches. But I believe that now it is the time to show what we are capable of," said Afridi on Thursday.

"It is true that we played poorly against New Zealand but what has happened has happened. It might backfire if I start scolding the players. I believe the right thing to do is to talk to the players and give them confidence and that's what I plan to do," stressed the leg-spinner, who is the leading wicket-taker in the tournament with 15 scalps.

Afridi, 31, plans to use the gap to rally his team in a bid to ensure that they win convincingly against the African side ahead of their last Group A game against Australia March 19 in Colombo.

"We can't panic," he said. "We have five days to regroup and we have to make it sure that we make good use of this break."

Afridi said that Pakistan need a forceful showing against Zimbabwe to regain their confidence. "The thing is that when the team is winning, everything seems fine. But a few bad results can change all that. We have to assure that the boys don't lose focus and to do that we have to win our next match in a convincing manner."

Commenting on the defeat against New Zealand, Afridi admitted that Kamran Akmal's poor wicket-keeping cost Pakistan the match.

"He (Kamran) dropped Ross Taylor twice when he had just arrived at the crease and those mistakes proved to be too costly for us."

But the seasoned all-rounder was quick to add that Kamran was not the only one responsible for the loss.

"Our bowlers performed poorly in the last ten overs. There was some reverse swing but Shoaib and Razzaq bowled too many full tosses to allow New Zealand to take the game away from us."

He also lamented the fact that openers Mohammad Hafeez and Ahmed Shehzad are going through a lean patch.

"The lack of form shown by the openers is worrying us now and we have to find a way to fix this problem."

Afridi didn't rule out the option of bringing in Asad Shafiq as an opener in the match against Zimbabwe. "It is certainly an option for us," he said. 

Oh Pakistan, What Are You Doing?

Pakistan’s cricket team is proving to be as unreliable as room service in a Paharganj guesthouse. One week it surprises us with a fine victory over Sri Lanka, yet the next it completely loses the plot and slumps to a humiliating defeat against New Zealand.

Spare a thought for the Pakistani fans, who have been subjected to more than their fair share of trials and tribulations over the years, not least the recent spot-betting scandal that led to lengthy bans for three leading players. Now they are faced with an all-too-familiar specter of a team that turns from tasty to terrible faster than a cheese left outside in the Delhi summer.

Until yesterday’s match against New Zealand in Pallekele, Pakistan was the only team to have won all of its games in this year’s World Cup, giving weight to the argument that it could be the dark horse that goes on to win the title. So far, so good. But then the wheels came off in spectacular fashion after Pakistan decided to give New Zealand a master-class in how not to play cricket, abandoning all composure in the field as players dropped catches, threw wildly and bowled badly.

Kamran Akmal, Pakistan’s wicket-keeper, was the worst offender, missing a couple of easy chances, including the simplest of catches that he should’ve held even if he didn’t have any hands. His woeful performance prompted pundit and former Australia skipper Ian Chappell to say that even if Akmal batted like the legendary Donald Bradman, he still couldn’t score enough runs to make up for what he costs Pakistan with his keeping errors.

Pakistan would do well to learn from New Zealand, who put in one of the best fielding performances this tournament has seen. The New Zealanders were as athletic and keen as the Pakistanis were clumsy and negligent.

But Pakistan has been one of the most enjoyable teams to watch this World Cup, and its victory over Sri Lanka was one of the best games of the tournament so far. Against that high, the team struggled briefly against Kenya, at one point on just 12 for 2, and then only managed to score a relatively paltry 184 against lowly Canada. Pakistan ultimately emerged victorious on both occasions, but there moments when viewers might have asked: “What’s going on?”

One problem this team faces is cynicism from onlookers. Pakistan cricket has been so blighted by controversy that any unusual results or passages of play are greeted with a raised eyebrow and suggestions that foul play and dark forces are once again afoot. Of course accusations of match-fixing are unfounded – sport is unpredictable – but that’s sadly a common reaction from cricket watchers when Pakistan plays.

In contrast, no such suggestions are made when England plays, even though the team has been involved in more bizarre matches than Pakistan this World Cup, including nearly going down to the Dutch. This reinforces the unfortunate truth that it will take a long, long time for Pakistan to recover from the damage it has suffered at the hands of match-fixing and spot-betting scandals.

The Pakistani players could help erase these bad memories by consistently performing to their undisputed potential at this World Cup, but on the evidence so far, I wouldn’t bank on it.

Pakistan are more like caged pandas than cornered tigers at the World Cup

The more punctilious among you may have noticed that this week's Spin is running late by the small matter of, oh, two days or so. Apologies. Last Sunday slipping away from the England team to head off to Sri Lanka seemed such a simple idea. Four flights, three airports, a round-trip road run from Colombo to Kandy and 2,041 miles later it seems safe to say I was being a little naïve. Never mind. I am now safely ensconced in Nagpur, a city getting into the swing of things ahead of the big match between India and South Africa this Saturday, and have a little time to look back on the last 48 hours.

In Sri Lanka I was hoping to write a paean to Pakistan. Having seen Shahid Afridi bowl them to victory in their first three matches it seemed to me that there may just have been a suggestion of a similarity between this team and the side that won the World Cup in 1992, in that they had drawn strength from the adversity they found themselves in. With Imran Khan's side it was just that they endured a terrible start to the tournament. Afridi's team, it hardly need to be said, have been through far worse things in the last six months. And yet here they were winning all their matches, with all the old enmities apparently put to one side.

Younus Khan, whose captaincy was so divisive that it led eight players to take an oath of allegiance not to play under him, is back from exile. As is Misbah-ul-Haq, who threatened to quit international cricket last July because he was so fed up with being ignored by the selectors. And then there was Shoaib Akhtar, still one of the most entertaining men in the game, even if he is a little thicker around and the middle and thinner on top than he once was. In my head I saw a line about their being a little of the spirit of Imran's cornered tigers about the team, but then I'm a bit of a sucker for lore like that. Turned out that caged pandas would have been closer to it.

Or in Kamran Akmal's case, a performing seal, clapping his hands at the ball as though he expected Afridi to toss him a fish if he happened to cling on to it. Cruel as it may be to say, his incompetence behind the stumps is staggering. In four games in this World Cup so far he has dropped two catches, refused to try for a third and squandered two stumpings. The wicketkeeper is the heart of any cricket team in the field, and Pakistan need a transplant. When Ross Taylor edged his third ball between 'keeper and slip, Kamran looked imploringly at the man stood alongside him, Younus, who simply turned his back and stared in the other direction. So much for team spirit.

When Shoaib bunged four overthrows over Akmal's head after fielding a forward defensive off his own bowling, he stood with one hand on his cocked hip and looking around the field. No one came near him. The cricket pitch has rarely seemed such a lonely place.

The post-match press conference with Waqar Younis turned into a roast at Kamran's expense. "Waqar!" shouted one member of the Pakistani press, "can you tell me, what is the difference between Kamran Akmal and Michael Jackson?" "You don't have to answer that," cut in the man from the ICC, but Waqar chuckled, happy to play along. "The difference is that Michael Jackson is dead," he said. Sadly, in all the ensuing laughter I didn't catch the proper punchline, but any suggestions as to what it could have been would be welcome.

Ross Taylor said that he probably ought to buy Kamran dinner to say thank you for giving him such a generous present on his 27th birthday. The clamour about Kamran's failings overwhelmed the shocking display of Shoaib, who seemed to be in a strop from his first ball through to his last, scuffing the turf like a kid kicking a tin can as he tried, and failed, to find the right mark to run in from. He and Abdul Razzaq, with 421 ODIs between them, bowled like beginners. Within an hour of their implosion, they would get a free demonstration of how to go about bowling on that pitch in those conditions from Tim Southee and Kyle Mills, almost unplayable in their opening overs.

Taylor's innings provoked school-boyish excitement in the press box, his sixes drawing whistles of disbelief and coos of admiration from the assembled hacks. But as the crowd roared him off the pitch, and Afridi patted him on the back in recognition of his innings, ugly words were swirling around the internet. As I read them, the elation I felt after watching such an entertaining innings vanished and my stomach turned as I realised that in England at least, Pakistan's defeat would be pregnant with unwanted implications.

After the events of last summer, some English fans and journalists are now unable to take Pakistan's performance at face value. This, as I wrote in the match report, is the burden the team now have to carry. Even though their play was no more bizarre or error-prone than, for example, England's against Ireland. "Pakistan get treated differently" say some, "and with good reason," reply others.

This is not an easy to topic to tackle, but it is also undeniably a backdrop of this tournament. These are fertile times for suspicious minds across the cricket-playing community. Last week it was Australia who were reportedly being investigated for spot-fixing, a suggestion they laughed off. Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera were also publicly accused of helping to throw the match against Pakistan. Then there were suggestions about the tie between India and England, based solely on the fact that Shane Warne had predicted the result beforehand. That was on Twitter, a medium that the 24-hour news organisations are hardwired in to but where innuendo comes cheap and libel tends to go unpunished.

There is no solution. Ideally we would trust the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit to do all the worrying for us, but critics would point out that it took the News of the World to do their work for them last summer. At the same time the media has a responsibility to deal in proof rather than rumour, something some outlets have conspicuously failed to do.

If you look for strange patterns you will find them in everywhere, that's what makes 50-over cricket such an entertaining game. Whether or not you then decide they are suspicious or not is a matter of your mindset. It is simply a question of whether you choose to suspend your disbelief or not. But if the answer is no, why watch sport in the first place? And that is why I wanted to see Pakistan win when I came to Pallekele, and want them to go on winning as the Cup goes on. It is the only way cricket can quieten the cynical voices.

Pakistan still puzzled by Kamran conundrum

Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi said that blundering wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal will not be made a scapegoat and fans should expect a traditional World Cup rollercoaster ride.

The 29-year-old Akmal has endured a blitz of criticism after his calamitous performance against New Zealand where two horror blunders allowed Ross Taylor to escape on nought and eight before the batsman smashed an unbeaten 131.

New Zealand's 110-run win was Pakistan's first defeat in the tournament and prompted calls for Akmal's younger brother Umar to be handed the gloves for the remaining group games against Zimbabwe and Australia.

That would leave Kamran to play as a specialist batsman, even being promoted to open.

Umar, who kept wicket in three Twenty20 internationals and a one-dayer last year, was seen practising keeping in the team's net session on Thursday.

"Kamran has done a lot of hard work for this World Cup, but he has not lived up to that level, and we suffered a lot after he couldn't perform," said Afridi.

His lapses allowed New Zealand to post a challenging 302-7 in Tuesday's game, after mustering a whopping 100 runs off the last five overs, after struggling at 202-4 in 45 overs.

Afridi stressed that Pakistan, who face Zimbabwe on Monday, should not panic as they are still well-placed to reach the quarter-finals.

"Kamran has won lots of matches for Pakistan in the past, he is a very talented cricketer, and I think we are at a stage where we shouldn't panic. There are other players who are not performing - it's not only Kamran.

"We need to back them. If we make several changes we can face problems in future matches, so we will see if Kamran plays the next game or not. From my side, I think we should give Kamran confidence.

"He is a good player and we expect that he will do better."

Afridi urged fans back home to forget the defeat to New Zealand and that following Pakistan is always a nerve-racking affair.

"Because of the way we have batted, bowled and fielded everyone should get angry but then we have to forget this anger and we should have confidence for the next match," said the captain.

"Everyone realises that we have made big mistakes but if you look at Pakistan cricket over the last 50-60 years it's quite normal for our team."

Afridi said Pakistan still need to solve their problems with their opening pair.

"We are here with perfect openers and I don't think we can take a chance on Ahmed Shehzad and Mohammad Hafeez. But we might open with Kamran, that's one of the options," said Afridi.

Pakistan's best opening partnership in four matches was just 28 against Sri Lanka.