February 24, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 22, 1423

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PAARL (South Africa), Feb 23: A shell-shocked Pakistan squad arrived here from Cape Town on Sunday after their shameful defeat against England on Saturday night that left them with only an outside chance of making the next stage of the competition.

The surrender at Newlands was an abject one. Teams do lose and win but the manner in which the Pakistan players raised the white flag to Nasser Hussain’s boys showed the team needs to perform miracles to restore the confidence.

While it will be childish to lay blame on individuals, everyone associated with the team is to be blamed for the debacle from a side whose officials have been blowing their trumpets of taking the World Cup by storm.

On the basis of evidence from two matches against Australia and England, the Pakistan team is simply not good enough to compete at the highest level and against even moderate outfits like England.

The morale of the team is low which could be an understatement of the year and it will require a Herculean effort to restore the confidence in the remaining three outings against Holland, India and Zimbabwe.

Although the situation is almost the same as what Imran Khan’s boys faced in 1992 but then, there was the great Javed Miandad at Imran’s side to pull the team out of troubled waters. In the present team there is no Miandad and skipper Waqar Younis is no Imran.

What is wrong with the team is a million dollar question. But the journalists covering the World Cup can see that Pakistan are like a bunch of disjointed lot who have little or no confidence in the skipper and the tour management.

The team has an easy match against Holland here on Tuesday and then take on arch-rivals India on Saturday which would certainly decide whether Pakistan will remain in the tournament or pack their bags for an early and unceremonious exit, something no one could say before the team arrived here.

And in case the team fails to reach Super Six it will be a sad day for Pakistan cricket and would need a lot of time to recover from this humiliation.