The Fast and the Furious

As expected, Pakistan, through a combination of ineptitude, infighting and ball biting madness, connived to leave Australian shores without a single win in a tour spread over the three formats of the game. In three tests, 5 one dayers and 1 t-20 game, Pakistan were consistently competitive for exactly two days (during the second test) and mostly abysmal for the rest of the tour. Well and truly, a tour DOWN UNDER.

On Friday, despite the superheroic acts of the bowling unit and some very un-Pakistan like fielding, the supporting cast that has become the batting unit, put in performances that could, in a parallel universe where more than movies were taken into account, have provided for the nomination of a fair few of the Pakistani batsman for the Razzies this year.

For batsmen that play the likes of Shoaib Akhtar, Aamer and Gul regularly and presumably comfortably, the inability to play the pace of Tait, Nannes and Johnson was inexplicable. But for Kamran's fearless attack, the world champions of T20 were likely to be humbled by margins that would truly have been a reflection of the difference in quality between the two sides.

A special mention for Tait's bowling on Friday is in order. His slowest ball was clocked at well over 150 KMPH and his fastest at 162 KMPH. For the mathematically challenged, that gives the batsman, standing about 19 yards away, approximately 0.4 seconds to spot the ball, judge where it is going to land, get his foot in position and get the bat swinging in time! And they say that this is a batsman's game...

Misery loves company goes the famous saying and how that was true of Friday. With Shaun Tait making life miserable at one end through raw pace, agression and remarkable accuracy, Pakistan was forced to take on the slower offerings from Nannes and Johnson, both of whom were bowling well into the high 140's throughout their spells... the pressure told and Pakistan crumbled like a biscuit held too long in a cup of tea. Pakistan needs to introspect long and hard about what went wrong on the tour if they hope to remain competitive on the international scene - the time for giving delusional media bytes about being competitive, trying hard and improving every day is over, as hopefully is Yousuf's captaincy.