Cricket World Cup 2023: Pakistan need to grab their last chance and beat South Africa

Having endured a roller-coaster ride the former top-ranked team are in danger of elimination

By Anis Sajan

Published: Tue 24 Oct 2023, 10:00 PM

Last updated: Wed 25 Oct 2023, 3:05 PM

To be a Pakistani cricket fan is like having a romance one day only to suffer heartbreak the next day. That’s how the team’s journey has been in this World Cup so far.

They were one of the favourites before the Asia Cup began but an injury to their fast bowler Naseem Shah, lack of form of their main spinner Shadab Khan and most importantly Babar Azam not firing with the bat has left the team on the cusp of yet another early ODI World Cup exit.

It was not so long ago that Pakistan were on a high being the number one ODI team in the world and were full of confidence coming into the Asia Cup.

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They started well against India in the first game reducing them to 40 for four but completely lost their way after that. They were also hammered by India in the second game and were sent out of the Asia Cup right after suffering a defeat to Sri Lanka.

But what hurt more was the injury to their star fast bowler Naseem which resulted in him missing the World Cup.

Pakistan began the tournament with back-to-back win and were looking good, especially in the second game against Sri Lanka where they chased down a record 344 runs.

This raised the hopes of the fans and a lot of pundits predicted they would make it to the last four.

But things have gone haywire after that as they suffered yet another humiliating loss at the hands of India at Ahmedabad and their performances have once again gone downhill.

They lost to Australia when conceding 367 runs as their fielding let them down. Things then went from bad to worse in the game against Afghanistan where despite putting up a respectable total of 282 after batting first, their bowlers failed to deliver as Pakistan lost by eight wickets. That defeat has virtually knocked them out of the World Cup.

Now with four games remaining against South Africa, New Zealand, England and Bangladesh, Pakistan need to win all if they hope to get the points that will take them to the knockout stage.

However, this looks really tough as the body language of the players, whose shoulders have noticeably dropped, indicates that the team is very low on confidence.

Pakistan’s next match is against an in-form South Africa in Chennai and the fans will be hoping that they can get back to their winning ways.

In the 2019 World Cup, they won their last four games but fell short because of a poor net run rate, that’s Team Pakistan.

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