How Sarfaraz Ahmed-led Pakistan side transformed from sheep to wolves in the T20 arena

As Pakistan were knocked out of the 2016 World T20 their future looked bleak. The Test team had had six years of excellence without any home cricket and were only a series away from holding the Test mace, but it was obvious to everyone that the MisYou era (Misbah-Younis) of excellence was at its end.

Meanwhile, the white ball teams had been in decline for years. The ODI team had had only one year in fourteen by that time where they had a positive win-loss ratio against the top-eight teams. Simply put: by 2016 Pakistan had been a consistently a below average ODI team for a decade and a half. The T20 team’s peak seemed to be in the forgotten past too.

After the first two World T20s where they were probably the best side, winning one and finishing runners-up in the other, there too the world had passed them by. Pakistan had the advantage of having one of the first domestic T20 tournaments, which followed decades of twenty and twenty-five over matches that had populated the lower levels of the game. But with the post-IPL era, one where they were ostracised from cricket’s multi-national mela, coinciding with no cricket at home, it had seemed like the best Pakistan’s cricket could hope for was to survive until better times.

Despite playing more T20Is than any other team, from the 2009 World T20 till getting knocked out in the 2016 World T20 Pakistan’s win-loss ratio had been eighth best among the twelve Test playing nations – the only teams with a worse record during that time had been Sri Lanka, Ireland, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. The quantity could not paper over the lack of quality. Shahid Afridi’s second tenure was the nadir: against the big five* of the T20I game (Australia, India, England, South Africa and New Zealand) Pakistan played 13 T20Is under Afridi, losing 11.

(A sidenote here: statistically a case can be made for the Windies being one of the big, if not the biggest/best, teams in the shortest format, but their fortunes in bilateral T20Is have too often been dependent on the relationship between their board and star players)

It’s been just two-and-a-half years since Afridi’s final retirement, yet it feels like a lifetime ago, such has been the progress of the team since then. 2017 was the second year since 2002 that Pakistan had a positive win-loss ratio against major teams in ODI cricket.  But it’s really in the shortest format that Pakistan have transformed from sheep to wolves.

The 2016 World T20 took place just a month after the inaugural PSL. At that time the new tournament felt like too little, too late: the game had left Pakistan by, and whatever Pakistan gained from this could not cover up for their absence from the IPL. Considering my own involvement with the league  I won’t eulogise it much, but the results speak for themselves.

Since Sarfaraz Ahmed’s appointment, Pakistan have won 29 of their 33 T20Is and have been remarkably consistent in a format that is otherwise considered volatile. For most of this period critics had undermined their achievements because of the quality of opposition, but after a season in which they stormed to a tri-nation title by beating Australia twice and then clean-swept both the Antipodean nations in the UAE those claims have been silenced.

Under Sarfaraz, Pakistan have now faced England, Australia and New Zealand 11 times and won 9 of those games. They beat England in England and won the 3-match series in New Zealand. Neither questions about conditions, nor about opponents, stand up to scrutiny anymore. And they’ve done it all with pretty much a new team.

The team that Australia knocked out of the 2016 World T20 had an average age in excess of 29; the team that the Windies knocked out of the World T20 before that had an average age in excess of 30; meanwhile the team that just sealed the series win against New Zealand on Friday had an average of  27, despite including the 2014 captain Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik, the only player in the current team who was there during both the 2014 and 2016 debacles.

There’s a variety of reasons for Pakistan’s success – from Sarfaraz’s uber-intense captaincy which seems to suit this format the most to Malik and Hafeez transforming themselves from what-ifs to the white ball versions of MisYou, but the success really comes down to players that weren’t even part of the reckoning for the 2016 World T20.

Pakistan’s first T20I after the Afridi era was a one-off match in England which they won. It saw the T20I debuts of Babar Azam and Hasan Ali. Since the last World T20 no batsman has scored more T20I runs than Babar, and only three bowlers have taken more wickets than Hasan – those three are Rashid Khan, Yuzvendra Chahal and the Jai to Hasan’s Veeru Shadab Khan.

Babar, on the surface, isn’t your typical modern T20 batsman. Of the twelve batsmen to score 500-plus T20I runs since the 2016 World T20 none have a lower strike rate than Babar, yet that doesn’t really matter to Pakistan. There are two certified ways of building quality T20 teams: either you follow the Windies/CSK model of having so much explosiveness in your batting that it makes all other disciplines moot, or you follow the SRH/Pakistan-in-the-2000s model of having elite bowling units that are complemented by a consistent batting lineup.

Sarfaraz’s Pakistan, obviously, have followed the latter model. And it is Babar who allows them to have consistent batting scores. His own run-rate since his T20I debut is 7.46; Pakistan outside of him score at 8.38, but it’s Babar that allows them to bat that quickly. He has eight of Pakistan’s 21 fifties over the last two years, and we have reached the stage where it’s almost expected of him to bat by the time the death overs come around.

By having an anchor, who is guaranteed to score at a decent rate while playing without risks (Babar has faced more than 27 percent of balls faced for Pakistan since his debut) Pakistan can fill the rest of their lineup with batsmen like Asif Ali or Fakhar Zaman and give them the license to play without a safety net. The obvious comparison, for the uninitiated, is Kane Williamson. The Kiwi captain has a similar T20I and T20 strike rate to Babar but both New Zealand and Sunrisers Hyderabad have shown how, if used correctly, an anchor can be the most important cog of the T20 batting unit.

But the final word, and the reason for Pakistan’s success, comes down to their bowling. First there’s the variety: the hard lengths of Faheem Ashraf, the late swing of Hasan Ali, the plethora of left arm pacers who all do something different, the in-swing of Imad Wasim and the everything of Shadab Khan. And then there’s the fact that all this quality complement each other and contribute their own unique thing to the final scorecard.

Imad is an elite powerplay bowler, one of only six spinners to go at under run-a-ball in T20I powerplays, who allows Pakistan to hold back their wicket takers; Hasan is the highest wicket taking pacer since the 2016 World T20, and perhaps the only bowler Sarfaraz truly trusts at the death; of the sixteen pacers to take 15-plus T20I wickets in this period none have a lower economy rate than Mohammad Amir and Faheem Ashraf; and then there’s Shadab Khan.

Ranked second in the world in T20Is he has been the cornerstone of Pakistan’s bowling and fielding units, the rest of the bowling unit allows him to be the wicket-taker in the middle overs. While other teams are forced to bowl their best bowler in the powerplay or at the death, Pakistan’s quality there means that Shadab can focus solely on making sure that no team can have a good middle overs spell against Pakistan. Between Babar and Shadab Pakistan can dominate the middle overs, and with that the match. And they’ll keep repeating that formula until someone finds an antidote to it. Now if only the 50-over game was as simple to crack.

Hassan Cheema is the Team Manager of PSL franchise Islamabad United