Pakistani cricket team
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The Pakistani cricket team is a national cricket team representing Pakistan. It is administrated by the Pakistan Cricket Board.
Pakistan is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and one-day international status. It played its first Test match in 1952 (against India at Delhi), becoming the seventh Test nation.
Pakistan has long been a moderately strong team, occasionally verging on brilliance. Amongst many cricket followers, however, the team has a reputation for inconsistent performance, being unbeatable one day and looking decidedly poor the next. Pakistan has produced many excellent bowlers such as Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Shoaib Akhtar, but fewer top class batsmen. Pakistan's bowlers are known for developing and perfecting the art of reverse swing bowling to a high degree of proficiency.
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History of Pakistani international cricket
Cricket has been followed religiously in Pakistan for a long time. While Pakistan is one of the oldest teams currently playing, most would agree that it rose to dominance and began to be considered very seriously under the captaincy of Imran Khan.
Some of Pakistan's most memorable matches have been the One Day Internationals (ODI) it has played against the neighboring nation of India. Although it has been very difficult to predict whether Pakistan would win a match against India, the significantly smaller nation has won 58 of the 95 ODIs it has played against India.
During the tour of India in 1997, the Pakistan team consistently and decisively outperformed the opposing side on their home turf. Batsman Saeed Anwar put on a show of brilliant batting performance making a total of 194 runs (the highest ever in ODIs).
In 2004, Pakistan has had a mixed set of results. India toured Pakistan after a long gap.
It lost its home series both in ODI (2-3) and Tests(1-2) to India. The One Day Series was very closely fought affair. The first match at Karachi, saw Pakistan chase a mammth 350 runs, and after an indifferent start, the came within sights of a victory but lost by 5 odd runs. The rest of the matches were also closely fought.
Pakistan also lost out and failed to qualify for the finals of the Asian Cup, following where they failed to clinch a bonus point and hence could not qualify even though they lost one less match than India who qualified for the finals. Srilanka eventually won that final.
Renowned Pakistani cricketers include Hafeez Kardar, Hanif Mohammed, Wasim Bari, Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Waseem Akram, Waqar Younis, Saeed Anwar, Inzamam-ul Haq, and Shoaib Akhtar.
Current Team
The current Pakistani Team players are Inzamam-ul-Haq(Captain),Younis Khan(Vice Captain),Salman Butt,Kamran Akmal(Wicket-Keeper),Yousuf Youhana,Shahid Afridi,Shoab Malik,Abdur Razzaq,Arshad Khan,Asim Kamal,Mohd Sami, Rana Naveed-ul-Hassan,Shoaib Akhtar
Team Performance
Overall ODI Perfomance:
Played | Won | Lost | Tie | NR | HS | LS |
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617 | 331 | 268 | 6 | 12 | 371 | 43 |
Trivia
1) The Pakistani cricket Team has a fan who has been following the team since 1969 Abdul Jalil aka Chacha cricket (see photo at ), he is paid by PCB 10000 Pakistani Rupees every month to follow the team, he is also supported by several other sponsors.