LAHORE: The Pakistan cricket team, who were ranked as the world No.1 in the T20 rankings in 2018, will end the year 2020 at 4th position regardless of of the result of the last match T20 game against New Zealand to be held in Napier on Tuesday (today).

Pakistan have already lost the ongoing three T20 matches series 0-2, having lost in Auckland by five wickets and at Hamilton by nine wickets.

Overall, Pakistan did not do too badly in T20 cricket this year, winning the series against Bangladesh 2-0 and beating Zimbabwe 3-0 at home but had only one off-shore victory to show, that was against England at Old Trafford by five runs. Pakistan lost that T20 series to England 2-1.

So far Pakistan has played ten T20 matches this year, winning six and losing four.

It may be mentioned here that when the incumbent body of the PCB, headed by Ehsan Mani, took charge in September 2018, Pakistan was enjoying the top ranking in the world in T20 format. But after two years of the current PCB regime, the team has slipped to 4th place.

Besides, except for Babar Azam (2nd) and Imad Wasim (8th), no other Pakistani player is included in the top ten list of batsmen or bowlers in the T20 ICC rankings.

Surprisingly, Afghanistan - a lower-ranked team - has two players namely Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi among the top-ranked players in bowling and in the all-rounder categories. England batsman David Mallan is at the top in the list of batsmen while Babar Azam is at second place.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020