England won ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia and was able winning T20 for second time in 2022. Earlier in 2010, they won in West Indies. English also won one-day world champion, so English team has in credit champion of two formats. It should be remembered that host Australian team defeated New Zealand in final of T20 World Cup in UAE and Oman last year in 2021 and won title by defeating them. However, they could not defend this honour as hosts, England and West Indies are in vice-versa who have been able to win this honour twice, while teams of Australia, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan have won this title once each. Pakistani team won this honour in 2009.

As for overall performance against England in final match of 8th T20 World Cup on one hand, after losing toss and batting, Pakistani team failed to shake fielding. There was no spark in Pakistani batting, then wicket also did not help in playing strokes. While boundary was big and outfield was slow, Pakistani innings was limited to 137 runs. But it was not something that team captain and bench officials were not aware of. Anyway, our team has played matches in this stadium before and if you haven’t played on this ground before, professional players and officials should have known about these things. It seems that after brilliant performance against New Zealand in semi-final, we did not take fin. On other hand, English players achieved target of 138 runs on behalf of Pakistan and achieved victory by five wickets.

Ben Stokes scored 52 runs while completing brilliant half-century off 49 balls. Team captain Jos Buttler scored 26 runs off 17 balls while Harry Brook managed scoring 20 runs off 23 balls. On behalf of Pakistan, Haris Rauf gave 23 runs while Shaheen Afridi and Shadab Khan gave 13 and 20 runs respectively and both were able to take one wicket each.

It should be noted that Pakistan was able to play T20 World Cup final for third time. Pakistan won title under leadership of Younis Khan in 2009 in South Africa. Pakistani fast bowler Omar Gul was able to take most wickets in this event. It is worth noting that in T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia, Sam Curran was declared Player of Series. Virat Kohli was top scorer and Vinando Hasaranga was top ticket taker. English team, winner of World Cup was declared entitled to 1.6 million dollars in prize money while Pakistan got 0.8 million dollars as runner-up team. India and New Zealand defeated teams in semi-finals also received 0.4 million dollars each.

Overall, this mega event of 2022 was successful. However, many questions were left regarding performance of Pakistan cricket team. Although Pakistan cricket team was definitely successful in playing final of event, for which team and players are worthy of appreciation, but cricket board, team management and selection committee must answer these question, of how they included unfit players in team? Why were they kept with team if he they were not fully fit? Were Muhammad Haris and Wasim Jr. included into team early? Why was a fast bowler like Hasnain, who is recognised for his brilliant performance on Australian wickets, kept out of entire World Cup? Why did Babar Azam as captain fail to take right decisions at right time during matches? Will putting burden of captaincy on him in future be considered as wrong?

And also why players like Shoaib Malik, Sarfraz Ahmed and Imad Waseem were not included in team despite voices of former test cricketers and analysts before World Cup?

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 18 2022

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