Pakistan is currently in the middle rung of the series with four points, with the chance to climb up if they beat Afghanistan's world-class spinners
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Hi, I am Ayaz Memon with the World Cup Update.
00:02 It's Pakistan vs Afghanistan.
00:04 The match is going to be played in Chennai and that's a crucial factor.
00:06 Let me tell you why.
00:07 First things first, Pakistan are in the middle rung of the points table with four points,
00:13 much like Australia.
00:14 And after England's, South Africa's thumping win over England at the 1K Day on Saturday,
00:20 there's a vista which has opened up for all these teams in the middle rung that they can
00:25 make it into the semis if they start winning matches from here.
00:30 Australia won their last match, in fact they beat Pakistan.
00:32 Now Pakistan have Afghanistan, in a sense an easy team to conquer but on the other hand,
00:39 not so easy.
00:40 And that's where the Chennai factor comes in because the Chennai pitch is known to be
00:46 a pitch for spinners.
00:48 And Afghanistan's big strength is in their spin bowlers, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Udraiman
00:54 and Mohammad Nabi.
00:56 So that's the challenge that Pakistanis have to cope with.
00:59 Usually they're considered very good players at spin bowling but we haven't seen that in
01:02 evidence.
01:03 We saw Adam Zampa getting a lot of wickets for Australia, we saw what Kuldeep Yadav and
01:07 Javinder Jadeja and you know, the Indian spinners did to them when that marquee match was played
01:14 at Ahmedabad.
01:15 Pakistan's biggest problem however is to get enough runs.
01:20 They've not been managing that regularly enough.
01:24 Problem within that, the bigger problem within that is of course Babar Azam being really
01:28 short of runs.
01:29 He's a class act, everybody knows that, he's a world class batsman.
01:33 But he's not even shown, I mean we just got glimpses of that, not the scores, the substantive,
01:39 substantial scores that you need.
01:40 It's all devolved on Mohammad Rezwan to bail out the team every now and then but how long
01:45 can he keep on doing it is the question.
01:48 From the bowling point of view, again disappointment for Pakistan.
01:51 Haris Rauf, Hassan Ali, the spinners haven't worked at all.
01:55 Haris and Hassan have been very expensive though they've got some wickets but very great
01:59 cost.
02:00 Shahid Shah, he's looked the part but he has to get wickets in his first spell.
02:04 So while it looks like a, on paper a mismatch, it's not really that because we know that
02:10 the Afghans are doughty fighters.
02:12 They beat in England in this tournament and they've got a string of high quality spinners
02:17 who can upset the best, Rashid Khan, Mojib and Nabi.
02:21 Pakistan need to be wary of them.
02:23 [Music]
02:28 (upbeat music)