After drawing second test match of the series against New Zealand, Pakistan has won their first Test Cricket series after a gap of 11 Test Series spanned over a period of 4 years and 2 months. Bari der ki mehraan aate aate!
But I have a comment on today’s match. Can you imagine Pakistan going for a draw under Imran Khan from a position where 66 runs were needed off 11 overs (NZ actually end up bowling 14 overs) and 6 wickets were in hand.
Imran would have gone for a match result in such situations whereas Misbah chose the safe result of a draw today. Pakistan scored only 18 runs in the last 14 overs. It will definitely look good on Misbah’s resume’ and he may even get World Cup captaincy over from Shahid Afridi tomorrow.
Now I do want to give credit where its due. Misbah is still commendable to have scored 6 fifites in his last 6 innings (70*, 99, 62, 58*, 77 and 76*). Misbah and Younis Khan held the whole batting line together in this test match.
Pakistan’s last Test series win was against West Indies in December of 2006. Following is the summary of Test series results since Pakistan won it the last time.
(1) 2010-11 Pakistan v New Zealand in NZ (1-0) (Jan 19, 2011)
(2) 2010-11 Pakistan v South Africa in UAE (0-0)
(3) 2010 Pakistan v England in England (1-3)
(4) 2010 Pakistan v Australia in England (1-1)
(5) 2009-10 Pakistan v Australia in Australia (0-3)
(6) 2009-10 Pakistan v New Zealand in NZ (1-1)
(7) 2009 Pakistan v Sri Lanka in SL (0-2)
(8) 2008 Pakistan v Sri Lanka in Pakistan (0-0)
(9) 2007-08 Pakistan v India in India (0-1)
(10) 2007-08 Pakistan v South Africa in Pakistan (0-1)
(11) 2006-07 Pakistan v South Africa in South Africa (1-2)
(12) 2006-07 Pakistan v West Indies in Pakistan (2-0) (Dec 1, 2006)
Misbah should be made captain for the World Cup.
Khail magar jee jaan sey………..
Great come back !
Finally the team has managed to win after along long time….. Hope that it doesn’t get over confident as always :)
They were clearly gunning for a result while Younis was out there; but after he got out, things slowed down quite a bit. It’s easy to say that they should have ploughed ahead, but at the time NZ getting Pakistan to capitulate in 10 overs seemed like a real possibility.
The trick they missed was not getting Vettori out in the NZ innings.
I will not blame Misbah for playing out for a draw.It was better to play safe for a draw and win series than take risk losing wickets to achieve 2-0.
For too long has the Pakistan cricket been insulted around the world not only by losing matches but for reasons we all know and it was time fans in Pakistan and team in particular get a morale boost and Misbah and his team has done it for Pakistan.
At last Pakistan’s batting was not blamed and Misbah and Younis did a sterling job in the test to win a series for Pakistan.
Zeeshan. You are right. I missed the Pak-Aus series in England. I’ve now made the correction in my list. thanks.