The Pakistan Cricket is certainly not going through a good phase as a lot has happened in the Pakistan Cricket Board and few controversies have also erupted in the past few days. While Najam Sethi has replaced Ramiz Raja as the chief of PCB and they both are leaving no chance of slamming each other, the new chief selector Shahid Afridi is not only making changes in the squad but he is also coming up with new rules for selection in the team, for example recently he made a rule as per which a batter needs to have a strike rate of more than 135 for getting selected in the T20 team.
As far as performance of the Pakistani cricket team is concerned, it has been disappointing and though Babar Azam was the leading run-scorer of the world in the year 2022 across all the formats yet as a skipper, he failed in making his team win the Asia Cup 2022 and the ICC T20 World Cup 2022. Talking about test matches, Pakistan got whitewashed by Ben Stokes-led England by 3-0 and prior to that, Pak also lost the 3-match test series to Australia by 1-0. This was the first time that Pakistan lost 4 test matches in row at home and fans slammed not only the cricketers but the board as well for preparing batting friendly pitches.
The condition of pitches is still the same as the recently concluded first test match of the 2-match test series against New Zealand ended in a draw and in the second test match which is being played at National Stadium Karachi, the visitors have once again posted a good total of 449 in their first innings.
Pakistan cricket fans were already annoyed with the quality of pitches and were slamming the PCB for preparing this type of pitches, alleging that the board is doing this in order to help Babar Azam in scoring centuries so that he can become the number one rank batter of the world but this time, a New Zealand pacer took to Twitter and called the pitch ‘an absolute road’.
The Kiwi pacer Mitchell McClenaghan posted of Twitter, “What an absolute road. Batters dream! #PAKvNZ”
What an absolute road. Batters dream! #PAKvNZ
— Mitchell McClenaghan (@Mitch_Savage) January 2, 2023
Soon netizens started reacting to this tweet and here are some selected reactions:
#1
Pitches in Pakistan are made for Babar Azam to score runs rather than Pakistan team winning any matches, No doubt Babar is a good Batsman but atleast challenge him to test his abilities and care about your team winning
— Sachcha Insaan (@papajiasliwale) January 2, 2023
#2
If player want To improve Stats Hababi come to Pakistan 😂 highway pitch pic.twitter.com/UWIcUO3emW
— vinod choudhary (@vchoudharyrj21) January 2, 2023
#3
They don't care about losses, only want Babar to score 100 so they can call him goat 🤣🥴
— Dave Fernando (@DaveNilanga98) January 2, 2023
#4
Till last night there was grass on the field but GOAT babar ate all the grass..
— Ajay Thakur (@ur_next_target) January 2, 2023
#5
Sir they make this type of pitches for personal milestone of babar. He make century on this roads thats enough for them. Test ranking of pakistan team is 7
— ABHISHEK (@abhishekrssorg) January 2, 2023
#6
Pakistani knows that he is out of Test Championship. They just wants to improve his ranking as a batsman by scoring runs.
— Kunal Saini ( ਕੁਨਾਲ ਸੈਣੀ ) (@Joyful_Kunal24) January 2, 2023
#7
Are bhai babar ko record banake kohli se comparison bhi to karwani hai na
🤣🤣🤣— Prateek Singh (@Prateek01347229) January 2, 2023
#8
https://twitter.com/Memepura/status/1609835242650734592
#9
Babar be like – yes I like it too 😂😂😭😭🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/UBdrfTHRga
— ` (@VKforever180) January 2, 2023
#10
https://twitter.com/ImSudarshan67/status/1609813813318283265
#11
They want Babar to score. That's it. Winning the test is of least importance
— Thomas Jones (@ThomasJ89724975) January 2, 2023
As far as the test match is concerned, New Zealand batters Tom Latham (71), Devon Conway (122), Tome Blundell (51) and Matt Henry (68) played brilliant knocks and helped their team in posting a total of 449 runs in the first innings.
On the day 2 of the game, Pakistan has scored 100 runs on the loss of 3 wickets with Imam-ul-Haq (35) and Saud Shakeel (0) on the crease.