I believe Pakistan win be victorious in
this series. Now a lot of you will be thinking, come on England are
the number 1 side and that we'll be lucky to even tie the series.
That's true, however Pakistan has been playing really consistently
over the last year or so and we didn't lose any test series last
year. Even though some of those were against sides like Zimbabwe and
Bangladesh but we did beat Sri-Lanka 1-0 who were above us on the
rankings table and we also beat New-Zealand away from home 1-0. The
fact that we've been playing so consistently will make our players have hight morals and they will waiting eagerly to
perform.
Another reason is our bowling attack,
both pace and spin. Let's discuss pace first:
Playing in UAE where the conditions are
very much the sub-continent i.e the pitches are flat and don't have
much for the bowlers requires bowlers to have the ability to reverse
swing the ball. For Pakistan, I think every bowler knows how to
reverse swing the ball. Umar Gul, Aizaz Cheema, Junaid Khan and
Wahab Riaz are all able to reverse swing the ball and we've seen that
in previous matches. On the other hand the only bowler that I know in
the England squad who is able to reverse swing is Tim Bresnan but
unfortunately for England he is out of the series due to an injury.
Reverse swing is something that is essential in sub-continent type
conditions and considering how James Anderson and Stuart Broad have
struggled in the past in those type of conditions, it has to a worry
for them.
Pakistan I feel also has a better spin
attack. England have Swann and Panesar who Pakistan has Ajmal, Rehman
and I feel that Hafeez should also counted as a full time bowler now,
considering how well he has performed as a 3rd spinner.
Obviously Greame Swann vs Saeeed Ajmal will be the main contest but I
feel that Ajmal has the edge here over Swann because of his
variations, that have allowed him to become so dangerous and he has
troubled the best of the best with his bowling. That's not to take
anything away from Swann though as he is also a really good bowler
and Pakistan will have to watch out for him but I feel Ajmal has the
edge of Swann. Then obviously England have Panesar who has a very
good record against Pakistan so he is some who will want to continue
his form against them. Rehman is the next spinner that Pakistan has
and he has also given batsmen a headache because of his tight line
and has a over the last few months formed a lethal combination along
with Ajmal in tests. England don't have a 3rd spinner in
their ranks while Pakistan have Hafeez who is someone that both
English opener Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook will have to watch.
Cook and Strauss are both lefties and Hafeez just loves lefties, he
has a very good record against bowling to left handed batsmen so they
better watch out. Overall though I feel that Pakistan's spin
department is better because Ajmal has the variations, Rehman has the
ability to hold one end tigh and pick up wickets and Hafeez is really
good against lefties and can also cause the batsmen a headache with
his testing lines.
Now obviously you won't win just by bowling well. You batting has to click as well but the point that I want to make is that our bowling is strong enough to defend even if our batsmen put a modest total. We saw the last time we faced England, our batting really let us down put because of our bowling we did give England a hard time compared to India who performed better in the batting department in England then us but their weak bowling caused them to suffer big defeats.
InshaAllah, lets make dua that our bowling and batting both click in this series as this will promise to be a tough series no matter what. Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments section.
No comments:
Post a Comment