Ramiz Raja feels alarm bells should ring for Pakistan after a disastrous Asia Cup

The Asia Cup 2018 turned out to be a rude shock for Pakistan as they performed well below the expectations of fans and critics alike. Recently, former Pakistani cricketer Ramiz Raja joined the long list of dissatisfied critics of the Sarfaraz Ahmed-led side and lambasted the national team for their lacklustre performance in the recently concluded tournament.

Although the Men in Green started off the competition on a successful note with a convincing eight-wicket victory over Hong Kong in their first game, their campaign unravelled post that. Apart from a narrow three-wicket margin victory against Afghanistan, Pakistan had nothing to offer and ended up getting disqualified in the last game of the Super Four stage against Bangladesh.

Ramiz shocked with Pakistan’s performance

With two big-margin losses against India, one in the group stage and the other in the Super Four, Pakistan were seen haplessly competing in the tournament with the players clearly having performed well below average. As a proof of their poor outings, the latest ICC rankings showed a dip in the team’s points tally as the team slipped three ranking points and were ranked 5th in the ODIs.

Ex-Pakistan cricketer Ramiz Raja tweeted about his disappointment with the current side and was scathing in his analysis of the team. Declaring a need for caution, he tweeted, “Pak’s poor run at Asia Cup gets shown up by negative numbers in ODI rankings! It lost 3 ranking points. Hassan Ali, amazingly the only pak bowler in top 20 of a supposedly world class attack lost 3, Babar Azam 4, Fakhar 3, & Hafeez 3. Shocking! shouldn’t the alarm bells ring!”

Here’s what Ramiz Raja tweeted:

Pak’s poor run at Asia Cup gets shown up by negative 👎 numbers in ODI rankings! It lost 3 ranking points. Hassan Ali, amazingly the only pak bowler in top 20 of a supposedly world class attack lost 3, Babar Azam 4, Fakhar 3, & Hafeez 3. Shocking! shouldn’t the alarm bells ring!

— Ramiz Raja (@iramizraja) September 30, 2018

Imam-ul-Haq was by far, Pakistan’s best batsman in the series as he accrued 225 runs in the 5 games that he played. Azam and Zaman were particularly disappointing with the bat as they scored merely 156 runs and 56 runs in the same number of outings. The bowling also seemed to lack teeth as Hasan Ali was the only Pakistan bowler who managed to pick up 5 wickets in the entire tournament.

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