When the Pakistan cricket team plays teams such as Zimbabwe, the West Indies and Bangladesh, it usually dominates them. Chances of embarrassment are slim to none; victories almost always guaranteed.

When it clashes with teams its own size such as New Zealand, England and Sri Lanka, it can go either way depending on where the series is being played, what the conditions are, yada yada yada. Who dominates, who doesn't, it's a toss-up.

When its path crosses with true heavyweights such as Australia, things naturall have a greater propensity to go ugly ... or uglier.

But true carnage is witnessed only when Pakistan comes into contact with its greatest enemy: Pakistan itself. Think Venom to the Spiderman.

It was this venom that bonded with the Greenshirts during the Asia Cup 2018 and could completely take over its host during the two-match Test series with the Aussies that begins today.

Read: The real reason Pakistan keeps losing to India at cricket

Those who think it was the brilliance of the Afghans, the Bangladeshis and the Indians who did what was done to the Pakistani team last month, think again. The Afghans did not make Pakistan take a flawed squad to the UAE, the Bangladeshis did not force Pakistan to stick with options that weren't working, and the Indians certainly did not put a gun to their heads to make schoolboy errors.

It was all Pakistan's own doing. Which is why the task ahead seems even more daunting than it should be. If faced with a super strong opponent, you can learn from defeats, analyse mistakes, tweak strategy, and repeat until one day you do what was once undoable.

But what do you do when the real opponent is you yourself. How do you cure the cancer that is rooted deep within your system, and often relapses: sometimes in the form of unfathomable discarding of Azhar Ali, inexplicable benching of Junaid Khan and then illogical recalling of Mohammad Hafeez.

The evil within, the alter ego, the malignant growth, whatever you might want to call it also insists on making Test cricketers out of run-and-gun folks such as Fakhar Zaman and Faheem Ashraf. It's akin to asking Usain Bolt to win the Boston Marathon.

While those two with the most blatant of short-format techniques are in the Test squad for the Australia series, Sami Aslam, a batman made for the longer format is not. If the argument against him is that he failed in one of the two innings of a recent tour match against Australia, then what about Abid Ali who scored 50s in both the innings?

If recent form isn't the criteria, and if temperament and technique isn't the criterion, then what is? How is it decided that Shan Masood, who had never played an ODI, should be taken to the Asia Cup, only to go unused and then dropped for the Test series, for which he too seems a better fit.

Let's not even open the can of worms that is Fawad Alam.

When you have chronic dilemmas such as these, who your opponents are and what the format is become irrelevant. With all due respect to the Aussies, they do not matter here. Not because they are the weakest Aussie side ever assembled across all formats in all sports but because their fate, like Pakistan's, rests on which version of Pakistan shows up in the series.

Iron Man or Iron Maniac, Fantastic Four or Frightful Four, Spiderman or Venom ... or Champions Trophy or Asia Cup ... what would Pakistan be like in the series against Australia, it unravels today.

Kumail Zaidi is a cricket aficionado based in Karachi.