Green Shirts - Time to experiment OR sticking to the plan

Pakistan, though, has qualified for the quarter-finals but their final group match against Australia is not an inconsequential one. If they beat the world champions they can top their group and face a lighter opponent in the QF.

Australia would have extended their remarkable unbeaten sequence to 34 after beating Canada tomorrow, barring a highly unlikely upset. Although yet to be tested in the real sense, they have looked a vulnerable side especially as far as their batting is concerned. Spin department is another chink in their armory.

Pakistan was the team that beat them the last time in a world cup match, in 1999 WC in England. Will Pakistan break their record by beating them again on Saturday? For me it is more than a possibility.

Coach Waqar has said that they would try their best to beat them to get momentum going into the knock-out stages. This means their is no time for experimentation. Probably they will go with almost the same team except replacing Ahmed Shehzad with Umar Akmal. But I think they should think broader for the sake of rest of the tournament.

To-date Pakistan's strategy has been too defensive in this WC. They are persisting with Abdur Rehman who is not a wicket taker. He is basically there to control the flow of runs. That strategy is defensive and has proved counter-productive in the past as we do not have the fielding to back it up. For Pakistan, controlling the run rate has always been achieved by taking wickets in the middle. We used to have aggressive spinners or good back-up seamers to do that.

Against strong batting line-ups, Abdur Rehman may not be able to do what he is supposed to do. Further, in the knock-out stage we will play in India or Bangladesh mostly ( except one QF and one SF in Sri Lanka) where wickets would be either road-like flat or heavily spin-friendly. So playing Saeed Ajmal in place of Abdur Rehman will benefit Pakistan immensely. With his variations he would be able to take a wicket or two in the middle overs on flat surfaces or he may run through a batting line-up on spinning tracks.

Pakistan should also try to play Junaid Khan. He may act as a surprise package for Australia and he may be required by the team later in the tournament in case Shoaib or any other seamer is injured. Throwing him at the deep end at that point would be costly for Pakistan.

I still believe Pakistan is playing a bowler short. We can drop either Ahmed Shehzad (unfortunately this exciting young batsman is out of form and short on confidence) or Abdul Razzaq (as he is useless at number 8) and play an extra bowler instead. In that case move Kamran Akmal (unfortunately he has to play as he is the lone wicket-keeper and dropping him would risk losing any part of Umar Akmal's body) up to open with Hafeez and play Younis at number 3. Then Asad Shafiq at number 4 should be followed by Misbah, Umar Akmal, Abdul Razzaq and Afridi in that order. This will not be risky as is considered by the team management as we still use the time-tested Pakistani method of playing safe upfront and then going berserk at the end.

So Pakistan have room for a bit of little experimentation for the sake of a bigger goal. Lets see what they come up with.