PAARL (South Africa), Feb 24: Pakistan, on the verge of an early exit from the World Cup, require a Houdini act to get out of the present precarious position and must win Tuesday’s clash against winless Holland as well as against India and Zimbabwe to keep their slim hopes of place in the next stage alive.

Pakistan not only, one of the few pre-tournament favourites to advance to Super Six, have to beat Holland at Boland Park but they also have to win by a huge margin, in case the third place is decided on a better run rate, a factor that can not be ruled out.

So far, nothing seems to have gone right for an unimagative and out-of-sort Waqar Younis and his team. They were demolished by Australia and then worse followed with a shameful defeat against England, leaving them at the mercy of other teams for a Super Six place.

And the blame lay entirely with the team think tank whose mind-boggling decisions especially in team selection has played a significant role. No one is allowed to settle down and apart from a few chosen ones no one is sure of a place for the next match.

Unfortunately, the experiments which should have stopped soon after the team landed here, is contining as well as those who have been utter failures, have been given chance after chance in the hope of faring better.

So far, in all three matches Waqar and his co-selectors have come up with a different opening pair and a new No 3 which is beyond comprehension.

As Waqar himself admitted, that the batting has let the team down and should produce better results. The continued failure of top and middle order is due entirely to tour selection committee’s follies as it is surprising that only one batsman had scored fifty in three outings and that man happens to be the unlikely Saleem Elahi. He also batted competently against Australia.

But on present batting form, he should have been retained against England irrespective of his past failures. Now it is now odd that he could be back in the final eleven to face Holland and then left out in the cold for the crucial game against India on Saturday.

Prime examples of befuddled tour selection committee, is having continued faith in the highly overrated all-rounder Abdul Razzaq and senior batsman Inzamam-ul-Haq.

Any other team would have dropped them especially Razzaq, who is neither a batsman nor a bowler of class, besides being one of the worst fielders in the side. But he retains his place despite three consecutive failures.

A better option is certainly Azhar Mahmood. If Azhar is not fully fit as stated by the touring party then he should have not been included in the squad. But Azhar as one saw, has been bowling flat out in the nets and there appears nothing wrong with him. Maybe he is not in the good books of Waqar whose own inclusion is debatable in the present lineup.

The coming three matches will be most testing for Pakistan, who have until now left millions of fans back home and thousands of South Africans who — after their own team — back Waqar’s boys bitterly disappointed.

What these millions will be watching and praying for, is for the team to bounce back and advance to the next stage and restore Pakistan cricket’s badly tarnished image.

Teams (from):

PAKISTAN: Waqar Younis (captain), Saeed Anwar, Shahid Afridi, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Yousuf Youhana, Younis Khan, Abdul Razzaq, Rashid Latif, Wasim Akram, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shoaib Akhtar, Saleem Elahi, Taufiq Umar, Azhar Mahmood, Mohammad Sami.

HOLLAND: Roland Lefebvre (captain), Luuk van Troost, Daan van Bunge, Bas Zuiderent, Klaas van Noortwijk, Tim de Leede, Reinout Scholte, Edgar Schiferli, Feiko Kloppenburg, Jeroen Smits, Jacob-Jan Esmeijer, Nick Statham, Henk Mol, Ruud Nijman, Adeel Raja.

Umpires: Steve Bucknor (West Indies) and Srinivas Venkataraghavan (India).

TV umpire: Tyronne Wijewardene (Sri Lanka).

Match referee: Clive Lloyd (West Indies).