The problem with Pakistan's World Cup preparations

One topic has obsessed the Pakistan cricket team, and those who bang on about it, in the past few months: the World Cup is coming. And the fact that it's going to be in Australia, so the team better be ready for it. After all, Australia represents all that is foreign to the Pakistani player, especially the batsmen. It is almost heartening to see the amount of thought Pakistan are putting - or pretending to put - into the tournament that defines eras. Good teams are sullied by one bad week (Inzamam-ul-Haq and Bob Woolmer's lot spring to mind), and mediocre ones are later regarded with mistaken nostalgia if they over-achieve.

Pakistan's squads over the past year have been picked based on what's scheduled for the following year. According to Fawad Alam's detractors, while he may succeed in Asian conditions, he will be found out in Australia with its bouncier, faster pitches, where he may struggle with the shorter ball, and on bigger grounds, where his lack of power will be exposed. Similarly Wahab Riaz is selected over those who have outperformed him in the domestic game because his pace will be an asset on Australian pitches.

Mohammad Irfan, the latest talisman for Pakistan, has even been rested over the past six months, just to protect him for the World Cup. It is pertinent to note here that while rotation and resting might be the norm throughout the world, it is alien for the Pakistani cricketer. And then there was the final straw: Sarfraz Ahmed, Pakistan's in-form batsman and someone who has succeeded at the top of the order, was sent in at No. 7 in the first ODI against New Zealand because, according to Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan are looking to use him in that role in Australia, as their late-order hitter.

All of this makes sense, of course. Pakistanis still fear Australia, where they've never won a Test series. Obviously it's a positive that Pakistan are preparing for the worst; but it would be more helpful if they actually prepared intelligently.

For all the talk in Pakistani circles of how every Australian ground is as big as the MCG and as bouncy as the WACA in the '70s, Pakistan's fixture list screams a different reality. Pakistan could waltz into the final having not been exposed to the Australia of their nightmares. In a way, it is reminiscent of the 2011 World Cup.

That tournament was essentially held in India, with almost 60% of the matches taking place there. For Pakistan, though, the tournament was pretty much a Sri Lankan adventure. And despite the fallacies regarding the homogeneity of Asian pitches, the conditions did play a part in how well they did. In India, the average first-innings score through the tournament was 260.1, with the median score being 268.

Of the 13 highest scores (of 274 or higher), only seven ended with the team batting first as the victors. The World Cup in India, thus, was a pure run-fest. In Sri Lanka, it wasn't. The average score there through the tournament was 233.3 with the median score being 223. In fact, in only one of the six matches involving the top-eight nations did the first-innings score go above 280 - and even that required heroics from Ross Taylor (with an assist or two from Kamran Akmal) to achieve that. In India, a score of 338 ended with the match tied. In Sri Lanka the highest score chased down was 230.

In a sense, that was a continuation of a trend. Since the start of 2010, each wicket in India has cost five runs more than the equivalent in Sri Lanka. The average first-innings score in the two countries during this time is 236.9 in Sri Lanka and 269.7 in India. In fact, in the latter, 49 of the last 73 ODIs have seen teams post a score of 260 or higher.

Thus Pakistan, a team that still hasn't moved on from the era when a score between 230 and 250 was a competitive total, succeeded in Sri Lanka; they won five of their six matches there and topped their group. Their quarter-final was in Bangladesh, where West Indies pretty much gift-wrapped the game for them. Pakistan returned home having been knocked out in their first match in India - a match in which they ended up having to chase more than 250 despite the slow pitch and typically good bowling; it was a scenario they have failed in in modern times.

It is with these memories that one looks at Pakistan's Australian hangover and questions their strategy. After all, three of their six group matches are in New Zealand - not exactly the home of the bouncy pitches and massive grounds that the Pakistanis are preparing for. Of the remaining matches, two are in Adelaide, perhaps the "least Australian" of Australian grounds. Thus, you could say that all their preparation is essentially for one match in Brisbane, where they take on Zimbabwe. And that isn't even the end of it - you could argue that this is simplistic and all this preparation is really for the knockout stages, but if Pakistan were to finish top of their group or finish third (the latter more likely, since they are the third-ranked team in their group) their quarter-final will be in Adelaide or Wellington, and their semi-final in Sydney - another of the "less Australian" grounds (where, since 2010, spinners have an economy rate of 4.53 compared to the fast bowlers' 5.17). Thus Pakistan could reach the final at the MCG having not played a single match at the MCG, Gabba or WACA.

Pakistan are spending months preparing for bouncy wickets and big grounds, and they could finish as the runners-up having not succeeded once in such conditions. It would be apt that Pakistan are preparing for the Australia they face at the Gabba or the WACA - two grounds that aren't hosting a single knockout match. The lesson here is simple - even when Pakistan prepare and organise, they do it with such simplicity and reductionism that they might as well not have bothered.