CHENNAI– His captaincy on line after a hat-trick of defeats, Babar Azam will be keen to find some inspiration and that exclusive piece of Pakistani magic when his team squares off against a formidable South Africa in a do-or-die game of the World Cup here on Friday.
One more defeat and knock-out doors will be shut on Pakistan and Babar, who is already feeling the heat, might end up losing captaincy as it will be virtually impossible for his team to salvage the campaign in remaining three games even if it wins those.
From here on, Pakistan needs to win all its matches and expect Australia to falter in at least two of their remaining four games.
There’s a saying in world cricket that one doesn’t know which Pakistan team will turn up on a particular day. There could be a geniuses at work one day and on other days, they could even embarrass themselves leave alone their legion of fans.
A gutsy Pakistan team is always necessity for a global tournament like World Cup and Babar would expect that against a rampaging South Africans, it would produce a world class performance.
The gulf in performance between two teams has been huge despite the Proteas’ shock defeat against the Netherlands at Dharamsala.
Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen have headlined the batting with timely contributions from others like Aiden Markram while Pakistan’s archaic batting approach has left them in dire straits at the halfway of the league stage.
The difference in approach is evident when one looks at the boundary count of the two sides. South African batters have hit 155 fours and 59 sixes while Pakistan managed only 24 sixes in five games and 136 boundaries.
An embarrassing statistic is Pakistan batters hitting a six in Powerplay after consumption of 1200 deliveries across games in first six overs.
In head-to-head record, Proteas enjoy a 51-30 in 82 clashes.
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