What a comeback by Sri Lankan tigers. Congratulations to Lanka team for their excellent cricket even when they came with a memory of white wash on their home ground just one month ago. They controlled their nerves and played better cricket from Pakistan team at their home ground and securing consecutive victories and white washing Pakistan. This was first series defeat of Pakistan in UAE since they started playing there as their alternate home ground and this is their second white wash at home ground as first was made by Australia in 2002-03 test series in Pakistan.

It seemed that Pakistan didn’t learned anything from defeat in first test as they again played with one regular spinner while Sri Lanka again came with two. The result again was in their favour as Pakistan only regular spinner took 8 wickets while Lankan specialist spinners took 13 wickets. Shan Masood also added problems for Pakistan as he played with very low strike rate [16(72), 21(101)] putting pressure on other batsman resulting in wicket of Sami Aslam in first innings and Azhar Ali in second innings as they both were trying to reduce the pressure of lower run rate which was mainly due to Shan Masood’s extremely slow batting.

Fitness problems also added in Pakistan Defeat. Amir could only bowled 19.3 over in first innings and got injured and could not bowled a single ball in second innings. Wahab also faced problems with his run-up in first innings. Further Pakistan played with 4 bowlers only while Sri Lanka played with five regular bowlers.

Pakistan batting line performance was also desperating. All batsmen played defensive cricket specially Shan Masood. Out of form Babar Azam was not seeming to put any effort to stay at wicket and scored only 8 runs in both innings while Shan and Sami scored 37 and 40 runs respectively in both innings. Only Asad Shafiq and Sarfaraz played positive and attacking cricket in second innings and added 173 run but this attitude change was too late as this was last recognized pair and adding 120 runs on 5th day without losing a wicket was a very tough task as losing a wicket here was most probably meant losing the match and which ultimately proved.

With this white wash, Pakistan team moved to number 7 in ranking as Sri Lanka snatched No. 6 position from Pakistan. This is just unbelievable that a team which was No. 1 in ranking just 13 months ago is now at No. 7. But Pakistan team is famous for this as they are very unpredictable and it is evidenced by their track record. In 1992 World Cup, they came back in tournament from a stage when their return tickets and dates had been finalized and ultimately won it. They won Champion Trophy 2017 when they were No. 8 in ranking. But this white wash raised many questions on team selection and management. Lets be hopeful that Green Shirts will shine again very soon.

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What a comeback by Sri Lankan tigers. Congratulations to Lanka team for their excellent cricket even when they came with a memory of white wash on their home ground just one month ago. They controlled their nerves and played better cricket from Pakistan team at their home ground and...