India and Pakistan will lock horns on October 24 in Super 12 of T20 World Cup 2021.
India's veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh doesn't think Pakistan have the players to compete against India right now. He also looked back at the last 10 years of cricket and feels the quality of Pakistan's cricket has gone down.
Speaking on India Today's Salaam Cricket ahead of India and Pakistan's 2021 T20 World Cup match, Harbhajan said, "There was a time when Pakistan had a very strong team and so did we and that led to some great competitions.
"In the last 10 years or so, Pakistan's level of cricket, in my opinion, has gone down. No batsman seems to have arrived who makes me feel that they can score consistently in Test cricket."
ALSO READ: T20 World Cup 2021: Harbhajan Singh says India’s bowling gives them an edge over other teams
The 41-year-old further said that only teams like England and Australia push India, and Pakistan aren't the same force like they used to be once. "T20 is a format in which anyone can score runs. If I look back at maybe 1998, when Anil Kumble took 10 wickets in an innings, Pakistan had batsmen like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar, Salim Malik, they had bowlers like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Saqlain Mushtaq.
"Today it doesn't look Pakistan can compete with India because they have maybe one or two players of that level in their team. The teams that really push India are England or Australia," he said.
Ex-Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar pointed out that the real cause of their downfall is mediocrity in Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). Akhtar has always been vocal of PCB administrators botching up.
"Our decline came when mediocrity came in our board. Average people thrive a lot in mediocrity. Mediocrity is the killer of Pakistan cricket, they kept bringing in average people, average leaders and we started declining. This has started since 2002.
"We had someone who played fast, he destroyed everything, then we had someone who played slow and he also destroyed everything. In the middle of all this, we couldn't identify out hero. Maybe our hero should have been someone like Mohammad Yousuf.
"In your country, Sachin (Tendulkar) became the hero, not someone who played fast. Virat (Kohli) and Rohit (Sharma) followed him. We are trying to smash everything, not playing anything along the ground," he said.
Akhtar added that PCB needs to stop being dependent on ICC's funding and they need to go into asset-building.
"PCB has to run like a corporate and for that till how long can we be dependent on the ICC's funding. Till how long can we be dependent on playing India when they are not ready to play against you. You have to go into asset-building. First of all, start your own broadcasting," he said.
(With India Today Inputs)