Fajar Rehman
Another World Cup has come and gone, and Pakistan cricket finds itself standing in the same familiar place it has occupied with depressing regularity: on the outside looking in, offering explanations where results should have been, and conducting post-mortems where celebrations were expected. This time, there was the minor consolation of advancing beyond the first stage, a bar so low that clearing it deserves no applause. What followed was a campaign that captured, in concentrated form, every weakness that has been eroding this team’s standing in world cricket for years.
The numbers tell one part of the story. Pakistan failed to beat any of the tournament’s genuinely competitive nations until their final group match against Sri Lanka, a fixture they won by five runs in circumstances that ultimately meant nothing in terms of progression. The match against New Zealand, which could have provided the margin of difference, was washed out by rain, and while Pakistan have pointed to that lost opportunity with some justification, the honest assessment is that their own performances had already placed them in a position where they needed external help to survive. Teams that are good enough do not arrive at the final fixture requiring a combination of their own victory and a precise net run-rate calculation to have any hope. They create their own certainty earlier, against better opposition, on the big stages that separate contenders from participants.
Against England, Pakistan were outplayed with a thoroughness that left little room for charitable interpretation. England, whatever their own inconsistencies as a team, applied the kind of intensity and clinical execution in that match that Pakistan simply could not match. The gulf was not merely in the final score. It was visible in the decision-making under pressure, in the fielding, in the bowling changes, and in the body language of a side that looked uncertain about its own identity at the highest level of the shortest format. That uncertainty is the most troubling finding of this tournament, because it is not new, and it is not easily fixed by a change of personnel or a motivational speech from a new coaching staff.
Sahibzada Farhan deserves genuine recognition in what was otherwise a deeply frustrating campaign. His second century of the tournament broke the record for most runs scored at a single T20 World Cup, a remarkable individual achievement that stands apart from the collective failure around it. Against Sri Lanka, his opening assault alongside Fakhar Zaman provided the platform that lifted Pakistan to 212 for 8, a total that felt, for a brief period, like it might be enough. It was not, and the bowling attack’s inability to restrict Sri Lanka to the specific target required to overhaul New Zealand on net run-rate summarised Pakistan’s tournament: moments of individual brilliance surrounded by collective insufficiency.
The absence of contribution from senior players is a conversation Pakistan can no longer avoid with politeness or patience. Babar Azam, once spoken of as one of the best batters across all formats in the world game, contributed little of substance. Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz, two all-rounders whose presence in the team is justified on the basis of delivering in exactly these high-pressure tournament environments, failed to justify that faith when it mattered most. Senior players earn their selection on the understanding that they perform when the stakes are highest. When they do not, and when the pattern repeats across tournaments rather than appearing as an isolated off day, the questions about their continued centrality to the team become not only fair but necessary.
Captain Salman Ali Agha, to his credit, did not deflect responsibility after the exit. He acknowledged his own failures alongside those of coach Mike Hesson, and he resisted the temptation to resign in what he described as an emotional moment. The self-awareness is noted. The question of whether acknowledgment without consequence constitutes genuine accountability is one the Pakistan Cricket Board will need to answer, not in press conferences, but in the structural decisions it makes about this team’s leadership and direction in the weeks ahead.
The deeper crisis is one of identity. Pakistan were, not so long ago, the most feared T20 side on the planet, a team capable of producing match-winning performances from anywhere in the batting order, generating pace and mystery in equal measure from the bowling attack, and dismantling oppositions with a ferocity that made them genuinely unpredictable in the best possible sense. That team feels like a distant memory. What has replaced it is a side that plays in bursts, depends too heavily on individual moments, and lacks the collective consistency that modern T20 cricket demands at the highest level.
Restoring what has been lost will require more than personnel changes. It will require the Pakistan Cricket Board to confront, with clarity and courage, the structural and cultural problems that have reduced one of cricket’s most storied T20 nations to an afterthought at the tournaments that matter most.
