The wicket-keeper batter Mohammad Rizwan has pointed out these reasons behind their struggle in the T20 World Cup 2024, in the West Indies and the United States of America, where they were knocked out of the group stage of the competition, on the back of their opening two defeats against India and the USA.
The Babar Azam-led side didn’t come into the series on the back of a smooth run, as they fell short against England with a 2-0 series defeat, before failing to hold their nerve against America, where they looked out of touch at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas.
When they moved to the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York, they found themselves in a perfect position with 48 runs being required at run-a-ball with eight wickets in their hands. But they still couldn’t get over the line in the contest.
They were required to get the better of Ireland and Canada by a huge margin, but once the USA and Ireland game in Florida was washed out, they were knocked out of the group stage of the tournament. Mohammad Rizwan believes there are a lot of reasons behind their poor performance in this campaign.
‘You can’t put a finger on an individual’- Mohammad Rizwan
When it comes to his performances with the bat in hand, Mohammad Rizwan could manage only 110 runs in four innings, at an average of 36.66, with a strike rate of under 100, at a best score of unbeaten 53 runs.
The skipper of the side, Babar also could notch up 122 runs in four innings, at an average of 40.66 and a strike rate of a shade over 100, with no half-centuries. That was a huge concern for the ‘Men in Green’ at the top order.
Mohammad Rizwan feels there were many reasons, such as their poor show with the bat in the powerplay, in the middle order, or at the death where they failed to finish the games, which didn’t sit in the right places of the puzzle and finally resulted in a struggling T20 World Cup 2024.
He is not ready to address one single reason behind their defeat and feels that it hasn’t happened because of the struggle for an individual.
‘When the team loses, there are a lot of things go wrong and that’s why they get defeated. This is not because of an individual reason. Because of the poor show on the individual, you can lose one or two games here and there.’ Mohammad Rizwan expressed in a recent interview. ‘But being knocked out of a tournament means, you have so many issues in various departments. The squad isn’t getting the right result.’
The 32-year-old observes that all the best teams who have done well in these departments have gone on to get the right result.
‘If you see sometimes we fail to finish, or we couldn’t have a great powerplay, or we didn’t have a decent death bowling, or sometimes, we couldn’t do well in the powerplay bowling.’ The Punjab-born Mohammad Rizwan remarked in the same chat. ‘So those teams that won, for them these things work out at the right point.’
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The way Pakistan lost their game against India, showed how underconfident they were as a team in this competition. Such a scenario required them to be calm and look for singles and doubles, but they couldn’t do justice to their performance.
‘So you can’t put a finger on an individual, but as a team, we didn’t play according to our expectations.’ He concluded.
Questions are being raised on the form of Mohammad Rizwan’s strike rate of 126.45 in his T20I career, to score 3313 runs in 89 innings, and if that suits the team in the modern generation. A call is expected to be made on the team’s selection in the upcoming weeks.