With in a span of three months, Australia have twice proved that they are too good to overcome. After beating New Zealand and India in 2003-04, they overwhelmed Pakistan on Wednesday, winning the third and final Test by nine wickets with more than a day to spare.
Pakistan were beaten, surely and comprehensively, 3-0, losing all the three Tests with big margins - first at Perth by 491 runs, at Melbourne by nine wickets and the final at Sydney, again by nine wickets. Pakistan last defeated Australia in Sydney in 1995.
The mauling was not unexpected for those who had been following this Pakistan team's performance since the last year or so. Their fears were confirmed when the visitors lost two side (warm up) matches played before the Test series began in Perth.
The performance was so mediocre against Western Australia and its B team that one did not need to be an expert to predict the result of the three Tests series. But it is not defeat that is of so much concern as the performances of the players, which our cricket management time and again keeps on claiming to be one of the best in the world. The batting, on which we were depending more than it deserved, was poor, to say the least.
There were some individual efforts, like centuries by Yousaf Youhana and Salman Butt and four or five fifties, scattered during the three Tests, but the team failed to cross the 400-run mark even once during the six innings in the three Tests. And no team can hope to put up a fight against the Australians - let alone win a match - if it cannot score 400 plus runs in an innings. To add to the team's misery was a spate of injuries, some known and some unknown.
Skipper Inzamamul Haq could play in only the first Test while Razzaq and Shoaib Malik missed the third. All in all five of the 16-member squad were on the injured list at one time or the other - too many for such a tough tour as that in Australia.
Of the five injuries those of Inzamam and Razzaq are yet a mystery, and there is no word from the team management about the nature of their injuries. The team management, in the meantime, has requested for four replacements, which the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has approved - in any case, what else could they do?
All said and done, it was a terrible show. Pakistan has yet to win a series in Australia and now they will have to wait for another four years. But of immediate concern is the tour of India in February, barely three weeks after the conclusion of the current tour.
The PCB think-tank (if there is any) will have to do some serious work to find out the reasons for such a mediocre performance in Australia before the team goes to India.
The Indians are at their best at home and proof of this is that it took the Australians 35 years to beat them on their soil - in 2003. In any case our team does not have a very commendable record during the last home series against India in 2004.
During the current series in Australia, Pakistani batsmen not for the first time, showed that they could be vulnerable against quality spin bowling. Shane Warne troubled them a lot throughout and in the last Test Stuart MacGill snapped eight wickets to be named Man of the Match.
India has at least two world class spinners, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, in addition to couple of youngsters, Murli Kartik being notable. On the other hand, Pakistan has only one leg-spinner, Danish Kaneria, who is not from the class of Warne or Kumble.
And one should not forget that Kumble achieved the distinction of equalling Jim Laker's long-standing record of taking 10 wickets in an innings against Pakistan when they last toured India in Delhi in 1998-99.
Man-to-man, India's batting is also better than Pakistan. They have at least three world class batsmen in Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid compared to Pakistan's lone batsman, Inzamam. Some may add Youhana's name to that. But his hundred in the second Test apart, his batting left much to be desired in the remaining five innings.
More worrisome is the bowling department. Shoaib Akhtar is injury prone and he showed it in Australia. We have yet to see him bowl throughout a Test series where the main strike bowler is expected to be capable of bowling 20 to 25 overs in a single day.
He has not been able to do so yet. Even coach Bob Woolmer seems to have lost faith in the fast bowler. He was reported to have said after the Sydney Test that "Shoaib is now only a shadow of his past". Sami was a complete failure in Australia, at least in the Test series. Razzaq is a bits-and-pieces bowler and can at best be used as a "relief" bowler.
It is far from being an ideal situation when a team is going to undertake a full-fledged tour of India. The selectors will have to work extra time to find a good seam bowling combination and one more spinner to help Kaneria if we want the team to do better than what it has done in the last one year or so.
TAILPIECE: An official of the Indian cricket board has been quoted as saying that if Pakistan has any objection to any venue in India during the forthcoming tour, the Pakistan cricket management must communicate its reservations with strong and tangible reasons for not accepting a certain venue (most probably he meant Mumbai).
He said that it will be however up to the BCCI to accept Pakistan's objection and change the venue. I was reminded of the days before the Indian team came to Pakistan last year when the PCB, over-obsessed, went out of the way to offer the Indians a choice of venues which by all international norms is a prerogative of the host country.