Wahab Riaz and Misbah take the match from Zimbabwe- Raza Ali

Raza Ali

At last Pakistan cricket team won its first World Cup 2015 match against Zimbabwe. Although Pakistan did not post a very high score, but fortunately the bowlers succeeded in restricting Zimbabwe on their way to an upset.

Looking at figures of the Pakistani innings, one can easily comprehend the "great amounts of talent" which some Pakistani selectors are trying to find in such street level players like Nasir Jamshed, Ahmed Shahzad and Shoaib Maqsood.

These are not the only three "good players" and "great talents" of Pakistani cricket. I only mentioned them because talking of people like Shahid Afridi is useless. He is overdue a retirement, but he is hanging on to the team like a lost ghost.

Shahid Afridi cannot move his feet, while batting, no problem, he is still a"great talent". Shahid Afridi does not play for the team, no problem, he is still a "great cricketing asset". Shahid Afridi is not a dependable player, no problem, he is still our "nation's pride". I cannot comprehend, are we playing cricket or participating in the national pride parade?

And please get out of delusions. Waqar Yunus was a great player, but every great player does not make a great coach. This is his third time around as Pakistani coach, but I can't remember any extraordinary achievements during the previous two terms.

Now let me just take a look at the worst Pakistani player, Misbah ul Haq. This bad player scored in all three matches. In the last match he and Wahab Riaz scored more than 50 runs, whereas “high class” players scored 1, 0, 27, 33, 0 and 21. The beautiful zeros were scored by the most talented players, Shehzad and Afridi.

We needed a fast bowler to strengthen the team. We selected Rahat Ali, on the basis of a single performance in domestic circle. Although we have very good bowlers like Anwar Ali warming the bench for many years now.We needed replacement for Hafeez, we did not look towards experienced players like Shoaib Malik, but opted for Nasir Jamshed, who was not worthy of representing Pakistan during bilateral series prior to the World Cup.

We will keep on celebrating victories against teams like Zimbabwe until we will not get rid of our delusions. Get rid of ghosts, get rid of gamblers and get rid of fake talent. Don't keep Sarfraz sitting on the bench, because he refuses to kiss behinds. Don't force players like Hafeez into injury to please board officials? Then and only then we can celebrate victories against teams like Australia, India and South Africa.