Australia-Pakistan : who will win ?

Today Pakistan and Australia are facing each other on 10:30 BST at the Taunton County Ground. Both the former world champions are the two outstanding teams of world cricket. Though Pakistan, is currently in a poor form, there are many reasons which here we aren’t going to discuss, like bitter cricket politics within PCB. Last year Pakistan performed poorly and continuing to this year in the same manner like the previous one. In 2018, Pakistan won only 8 out of 18 ODI matches, mostly against the weaker opponents like Afghanistan, Hongkong, and even lost their only matches against their younger opponent Bangladesh, lost both their matches to India and won only one of 7 against weaker Newzealand. So, considering this data and statistics, Pakistan’s cricket is curretly going downhill. So, how their opponent’s of today’s performed last year? Australia, on the other hand, is much better organized and disciplined. Considering overall head to head, Pakistan vs. Australia, Pakistan won only 32 out of 103, a 32.5% winning ratio. Their today’s opponent, Australia, didn’t perform much better in the previous year, out of 13 ODI matches they won only 2, one of 3 against South Africa and 1 of 10 against England. Considering last years ODI performance Australia performed even poorer than Pakistan. In light of these facts, Australia has always been put ahead of Pakistan, to be likely victorious of today’s matchup.

Now, we are going to see what the both teams did prior coming to the world cup and in the matches, they have played already. Australia lost 1-2 against India in January, won all 5 of their matches against Pakistan held in UAE, in March visiting India they won 3-2 against India and won all 3 of their world cup warm-up matches. Whereas, Pakistan lost all their WC warm-up matches, even lost to a much weaker opponent Afghanistan and lost all their matches against England; in their ODIs played in 2019, lost 0-5 to Australia, 2-3 to South Africa.

Following their humble performance in the WC warm-up matches, Pakistan opened their world cup devastated by a weaker West Indies, losing by 7 wickets, where they only managed to score 105 runs in 21.4 overs, what were more humiliating for the former WC champions, that they didn’t manage even to play the whole 50 overs. But in the following match they bounced back by scoring a massive 348 runs against much better bowling of England and won by 14 runs.Where as Australia defeated W.indies by 15 putting a total of 288 runs, but lost to India in a very high scoring match, where India put 352 runs to chase, but Australia has fallen short of 36 runs.

In conclusion, who has the better chance of coming through in the upcoming AUS vs. Pakistan match. Pakistan also is a capable team,they lost to Afghanistan in the WC warm-up match but defeated England by putting up a massive 348 runs, where in their opening WC match their batsmen didn’t even manage to play the full quota of 50 overs and scored a dismal 105 runs. Where as the Australians are much well organized and disciplined side and they rarely made surprises; winning the expected matches against the weaker sides, rarely losing to them and fight very hard against able-bodied opponents. So, considering all of these facts, I want to keep Australia ahead of Pakistan in the upcoming match of 12th Jun 2019, to be held at the Taunton County Ground.

Data Source: www.espncricinfo.com