Former Pakistani speedster Shoaib Akhtar highlighted the reason behind the Babar Azam-led side’s loss against Australia in the second semi-final of the T20 World Cup 2021 at Dubai.
After winning 5 out of their 5 games in the group stage of the T20 World Cup 2021, Pakistan suffered a heartbreak as they lost the nail-biting semi-final by 5 wickets to see themselves getting knocked out of the tournament.
Batting first, Pakistani batters were at their best and on account of Mohammad Rizwan’s 67 and Fakhar Zaman’s unbeaten 55 runs, posted a total of 176 runs on the board.
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Defending the target, Pakistan were all over Australia and it almost seemed that they would stage a dominant victory as they reduced the Aaron Finch-led side to 96/5.
However, with 62 runs needed off the last 5 overs, the duo of Matthew Wade and Marcus Stoinis took Pakistani bowlers to cleaners and chased the target with one over to spare.
Although Matthew Wade survived a dropped chance on the third ball of the 19th over, he smash Shaheen Afridi for three consecutive sixes in the next three deliveries to take his team into the finals of the T20 World Cup 2021.
Former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar while highlighting the reason behind the loss against Australian said that Babar Azam being a young skipper failed to be composed in the end. He added that the Men in Green were not scared but panicked in the end.
"You have to agree here that our (Pakistan) captain is young and new and in the end could not keep composed. On the other hand, Australia is a mature team and there they used their experience, culture, base to remain composed and did not get scared. Pakistan team, though, did not get scared but panicked,” Shoaib Akhtar said in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
Akhtar said that with Pakistan winning 5 out their 5 games in the league stage, this was their World Cup to win as they might not get such an easy chance again.
"He (Babar Azam) is a new captain and I understand that but winning 5 out of 6 games, I thought this was Pakistan's World Cup to win. This could have been won. We might not get such an easy chance ever again. We tried our best but the best was not good enough for yesterday. The better team won," he said.
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Shoaib Akhtar pointed out that even though Fakhar Zaman played brilliantly but he failed to rotate the strike in the middle overs. He felt that Pakistan should’ve scored 200 runs.
"Fakhar Zaman is a good player and he played brilliantly against Australia but he does not rotate the strike in the middle overs. He remained stuck for 3-4 overs and was unable to rotate the strike. I think we should have scored 200 runs. Overall, Pakistan has done wonderfully well but I personally think that it could've been better," he said.
Here’s the video:
