JOHANNESBURG, Feb 27: For Pakistan’s highly-strung cricketers, the World Cup has so far offered nothing but disappointment despite two individual records established by Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar.

Wasim became the first bowler in limited version of the game to scalp 500 victims — an outstanding honour well-merited for a great cricketer.

The other mark by Shoaib Akhtar, who hurled the fastest ball ever bowled in a match of any kind, when he was officially clocked 161.3 kilometres to break the 100-mile barrier. This perhaps could be good public relations exercise for a showman like Shoaib but has not done any good for Pakistan cricket.

On the field, it has been nothing but disappointment all round. Losing badly to Australia was expected but the manner in which our boys went down without fighting against an ordinary England outfit was disgraceful.

Only two batsmen from Pakistan managed to score fifties, let alone compiling a century, thus highlighting the bankruptcy of our batting.

Our much rated batsmen could not score a century against the likes of Namibia and Holland.

Never in the history of World Cup our batsmen have fared so badly and judging by their body language in the last four outings, all does augur well for the future matches unless there is a dramatic turn around in the fortunes of Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar and Yousuf Youhana.

In the bowling department except for the evergreen Wasim, no one has produced anything special. The biggest disappointment has been Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)’s favourite son Shoaib Akhtar.

Apart from his personal achievement of being the fastest bowler in the world he has hardly done anything of note particularly against Australia and England.

Against England he was one of the factors behind Pakistan losing so badly as he was all over the place and went for 63 runs in nine overs.

Skipper Waqar Younis, off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq and the utility man Abdul Razzaq have been simply mediocre, posing no threat to the batsmen.

Only in the fielding department a slight improvement was visible, though still not comparable with the likes of Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

So now it boils down to the clash against India on Saturday. Another defeat will mean curtains and an early ride back home, leaving millions of Pakistani fans in despair and agony.