Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra had his say on Pakistan’s journey in the ICC World Cup 2023 saying that he expected more from the team.
Pakistan is currently playing England in what is likely to be their last match of the tournament.
Chopra talked about Pakistani batters while specifically mentioning Babar Azam — who has scored 282 runs in eight innings at an average of 40.28 and an ordinary strike rate of 82.69 — saying that he didn’t play as everyone expected him to on batting tracks in India.
“If we talk about batting, Mohammad Rizwan played well at the start but Babar Azam hasn't played well in the entire tournament. Whenever he has played, he has played at almost a run-a-ball and we didn't see any dominating knock, although these are good batting conditions,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
Chopra also talked about Fakhar Zaman who was dropped after Pakistan's first match of the tournament against the Netherlands but played in a fantastic manner after making his comeback late in the mega event against Bangladesh and also added that he didn't see the "might" in Pakistan's lower middle-order.
“Fakhar Zaman was there at the start, then he wasn't, and he played well when he came back. However, by the time he came, Imam-ul-Haq was out. Abdullah Shafique is playing and if we see down the order, the might was not seen.”
“The truth is that it has not been a very good tournament. I will be very honest, I had more expectations from this team. Maybe my expectations were wrong because the way they played the Asia Cup, you could figure out that this team is not playing modern-day cricket,” he added.
It is worth mentioning that despite a great start in their mega event campaign where Babar Azam-led unit registered back-to-back wins against the Netherlands and Sri Lanka, they went on to a four-match losing streak — the first time in their World Cup history — and became dependent on results of other teams to qualify for the semi-finals.
- Aakash Chopra