Adil Najam
Pakistan plays its second group match in the 2007 World Cup Cricket against Ireland today.
Having already lost the first match to hosts West Indies, if the troubled Pakistani team also loses this game, it would have effectively eliminated itself from the tournament even before the ‘Super 8’ begin. On the other hand, if Ireland wins, it will be a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day windfall for the Irish.
Even though Ireland had pulled in a remarkable effort by tieing against Zimbabwe, the odds say that Pakistan will not lose today (and if they do, would there be any hope at all left for Pakistan cricket?). But around 20 per cent of our readers seem to think that Pakistan will fail to make it to the Super 8 – if not by losing today’s game, then by losing the last Group game against Zimbabwe. This according to the results of our ATP Poll on Pakistan’s prospects for the Cricket World Cup 2007.
(Click above for larger image)
The overall prognosis from the Poll seems to be rather bleak.
- A total of 398 votes were cast in the Poll.
- Some 20 per cent (79 votes) believe that Pakistan will not even make it past the group stage into the ‘Super 8.’
- This means that 80 per cent feel that the team will get into the Super 8. However, just about half (47 per cent; 188 votes) believe that Pakistan will not get beyond the Super 8 stage.
- A total of 34 per cent (131 votes) believes that Pakistan will, in fact, get to the Semi-Finals. But 20 per cent (78 votes) are of the view that the team will get no further than the Semi-Finals.
- 53 people (14 per cent) are of the view that the green caps will get to the Finals; and of these 43 (11 per cent of total) feel that we will win.
Personally, in this case I would hope that the majority is wrong and the 43 people who think that Pakistan will actually win the World Cup turn out to be correct. I hope so, but, frankly, I am not holding my breath.
must be nice to work for an organisation like pcb where you you can commit the biggest goof ups and deliver absolutely no results and still not be held accountable. and our players are absolutely shameless as well. instead of acting like a man and taking responsibility for probably the biggest debacle ever for pak cricket, inzamam is blaming the god of qismuth which apparently has been a little angry with pak cricket recently. pak has won only 6 out of the last 15 matches and 12 out of the last 30. success has only come at home on flat pitches and/or against team with weak fast bowling attacks. over the last year, pak lost to a crap team like india 4-1 at home, absolutely got hammered by s.africa and went no where in the champions trophy.
anyone who has any knowledge of cricket should not be surprised by w.c. results. question is why did leadership not foresee this outcome? clearly inzamam puts yaari dosti above national honours. why however did the board allow him to have his way? i think its possible that board was powerless because inzamam had protection from people above the board maybe from musharraf directly. all this power in the hands of inzamam proved to be dangerous because he neither has the charisma of imran, nor possesses the cricketing genius of miandad. inzamam was simply out of his depth in the role assigned to him.
inzamam is one of the greatest players to play for pak. i think his stature will go up in the eyes of awam if he does the honourable think and resigns with grace. won’t be good to see a great player like him being kicked out. as for pak cricket, i think will be downward path if pcb does not start functioning as a modern organisation run on scientific lines. real danger is cricket will go along the lines of hockey and squash if the board does not learn.
Adnan Sidiqui:
I am not interested in engaging in a long debate with you and in fact realize that I made a mistake by making that comment because people like you and some religion bashers were bound to jump on it by turning it into a theological debate as some previous posts show.
But just a clarification, and this is purely from the point of view of projecting Islam. When Inzamam speaks in the post match ceremony, he does have a non-Muslim audience, and when he says ‘thanks to Allah’ without any explanation of the concept of being thankful to Allah regardless of the situation, non-Muslim audiences are only bound to laugh at Islam. If Inzamam’s statement is directed only towards the Muslim audience, then he can say Alhamdulillah and Muslims will understand it. But if his purpose in saying ‘thanks to Allah’ is to send some kind of religious message to non-Muslims, then it’s totally counter-productive because this is something they won’t be able to understand due to their lack of knowledge. Whenever Inzamam makes this statement, I can not help thinking that people must be finding it funny, and hence it becomes more of an embarrasment rather than a service to Islam.
@Aqil: Muslims have been asked to Thank Allah everytime even if they suffer. Comeon. This is the basic we learn in our homes. Didn’t you learn that? No doubt Inzy and Co didn’t perform well but as muslims we are firm belivers that victory and defeat is not in our hand. Don’t worry about non-Muslims. I am sure they are smart enough for not thinking in the same manner like you.
One thing which is disappointing that pakistanis are blaming 11 players. It would be useless to repat wordw here while I already expressed my concern here on KMB. Please guys don’t give others a chance to make fun of your ignorant mentality.
tinyurl.com/yrk9q5
Interestingly enough, only a day or two back, Woolmer was defending the inclusion of the weaker teams in the world cup, now he and his team have just provided some solid experimental evidence to illustrate this point. :)
great .. we’re out of the tournament already woo hoo.. great job.. so i suppose the 20% were correct that pakistan wouldnt be able to make even to the super 8 .. in a way that saves us from the painful elimination in the super 8 stage.. ( i was one of the voters who thought we’ll ge to the super 8 atleast..) … just sad for pakistan — i mean apart from all the sarcasm .. i’m really sad and disappointed although ofcourse didnt have much hope to begin with but well… what really is the hope for Pakistan cricket ..