T20 World Cup: Why Babar's Pakistan failed to emulate 1992 heroes

Everyone knew the T20 World cup final was going to be a clash between England’s fearless batting and Pakistan’s world-class bowling. But both teams forgot this was on the big ground of Melbourne where the square boundaries were big and the wicket was fresh.

Especially the Pakistan team who already had the experience of playing their first match against India when they lost to the genius of Virat Kohli.

The pitch at the ‘G’ was under covers for the last few days because of rain and was always going to be spicy.

Jos Buttler made the right decision by asking Pakistan to bat first. There was a lot of movement for all the English bowlers, especially Sam Curran who bowled back of length or the hard length which was not easy to negotiate on this sort of wicket.

Batting on this ground was not easy as it was at Sydney or Adelaide. Pakistan, who were coming from their last two wins there over Bangladesh and New Zealand, should have realised that after playing one game against India.

Big shots were not the norm as the square boundaries are almost 90 meters on both sides and placing the ball and running hard, converting ones into twos and twos into threes was key.

Yes, you need to maximise the power play but only when the ball is full where you could play your shots.

And Pakistan had done the hard work of negotiating the first few overs well before they lost Mohammad Rizwan.

This is where Babar Azam had to play the anchor role as this pitch demanded the right technique, not slogging, from the batters.

But he was foxed by a googly from Adil Rashid.

Pakistan, who reached 120 in the 16th over, were still looking good for 150 plus total, though.

Anis Sajan is the vice-chairman of the Danube Group