Pakistan's whitewash suffered at the hands of Bangladesh on home soil has seen them hit a new low, particularly in Test cricket. Could it be their lowest point of all time?
On Tuesday afternoon in Rawalpindi, Shakib Al Hasan muscled Abrar Ahmed through the covers to take Bangladesh over the line in the second Test against Pakistan. As he let out a scream of delight, and the Bangladesh team celebrated in the dressing room, the eleven Pakistani players on the field cut a sorry figure.
Before this series, Pakistan had never lost a Test match to Bangladesh. In this series, they lost twice in two matches. While there were errors of their own making, there is no denying that they were also simply outplayed for long periods of both Tests. The "Bangla-wash" is the latest in a line of sordid recent chapters in Pakistan's cricketing history.
This is not an obituary of Pakistan cricket, because turmoil, both on-field and off-field, appear to have been woven into its fabric. But it is worth asking, is this the lowest it has ever been?
The depths of despair
Since the start of last year, Pakistan have suffered their first-ever losses to Afghanistan in both the T20I and ODI formats, their first-ever T20I loss to Ireland and a T20 World Cup-exiting loss to the USA. Worryingly, almost none of these came from freak individual performances by an opposition player. By and large, Pakistan looked the inferior side in these contests.
It is difficult to remember many worse periods in their recent history. The atmosphere around the game, at least from the outside, has frequently been fractious, and dotted with controversy, but these have not always coincided with poor on-field results.
Read more: Mehidy Hasan Miraz dedicates Player of the Series award to killed anti-discrimination protestors
Indeed, most of the lower points in Pakistan's cricketing history have come off the field. Political turmoil in the country in the 1960s and 1970s (which resulted in the formation of Bangladesh) meant that between 1965 and 1973, almost no international cricket was played in Pakistan.
The terrorist attack on the touring Sri Lankan team in Lahore in 2009 was another low. Apart from the threat to life, and injuries suffered by players and officials, the upshot was that no team would return to tour the country for six years. Test cricket did not return for over a decade, until Sri Lanka came back in 2019.
Shakib Al Hasan 4⃣
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) September 3, 2024
Mushfiqur Rahim 9⃣
Mehidy Hasan Miraz❓
One Bangladesh player received a perfect 10 for their performances against Pakistan! 🇧🇩
Full ratings ➡️ https://t.co/uq2JOJ6Xrx pic.twitter.com/fcelfCi2QP
Another incident that remains fresh in the mind is from 2010. The spot-fixing scandal at Lord's involving Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir was a national embarrassment, and hit Amir, 17 years old and a burgeoning talent at the time of the incident, hardest.
But through all this, Pakistani cricket fans largely had their team's success to fall back on. When international cricket returned to Pakistan in the mid-1970s and 1980s, they were soon able to rely on the likes of Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis to win them matches. During their time away from home, in the UAE in the 2010s, they even enjoyed a period of time as the No.1 Test team in the world.
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Of course, there have been poor results before. In 1998, they lost a home Test series against Zimbabwe 1-0 after fog forced the final match to be abandoned. In 2007, they put up an embarrassing showing in the World Cup against Ireland and in 2013, they lost another Test match to Zimbabwe in Harare.
The difference is, these results used to be few and far between. Perhaps it is just coincidence, or dumb luck, that Pakistan have suffered a series of such results over the last 18 months. But maybe it isn't, and it is not as though performances between these troughs have been commensurate peaks.
Could things get any worse for Pakistan?
It has been over three years since Pakistan tasted victory in a home Test match – and this is not the 1960s, or the 2010s. They have been playing here. In fact, they have now gone ten matches on home turf without a win. Only once in their history have Pakistan endured such a run of results before; they went 11 home matches without a win between 1969 and 1975. Even then, ten of those matches were drawn.
The last two defeats have come against a team that couldn't buy a win outside their home – in 24 years, Bangladesh had won six out of 65 away matches before this series. And Pakistan were, at times, made to look like amateurs in front of them.
In this run of ten matches, Pakistan have taken more than 15 wickets in a match just twice – both times against England, and when the scoring rates were 4.7 and 6.7 runs per over through their bowling innings. Their wicket-taking ability at home has fallen off a cliff, and this is despite having a couple of the best young talents in recent years.
Purely from a results standpoint, this is quite possibly the worst-ever period in Pakistan's cricketing history. There has been no on-field respite, in any format. Add to all this the near-relentless criticism from any given quarter of ex-pros, and a boardroom that sees more changes than an infant with severe diarrhoea, and it becomes difficult to think of a worse time for any Pakistan team, ever.
Funnily enough, it still seems inevitable that Pakistan cricket will eventually return to a semblance of respectability. The question is, how much lower could it possibly go before that happens?
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