Why Pakistan can Win Asia Cup 2022
The much-awaited Asia Cup is going to start in UAE on 27 August 2022. The two favorite teams of the Asia Cup Pakistan and India are placed in one group including a qualifier. This gave birth to an additional match between the two traditional rivals who stopped playing bilateral series many years ago. In another group Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are placed.
India is the defending champion of Asia Cup 2021. It won the final by defeating Bangladesh. It is leading the titles with 7 wins, 5 by Sri Lanka and 2 by Pakistan. But the recent performance of the Pakistan team has increased to a level that it can win Asia Cup 2022. it has played home series as well as tour to other countries. in all the fixtures the performance was up to the mark.
The main competitor of Pakistan may be India which can give it a tough time. Both teams last played in ICC World T20 World Cup 2022. Pakistan won that match by 10 wickets.
Betjee has done an analysis and comes up with some dominant reasons, that why Pakistan is the favorite to win Asia Cup 2022.
Well Set Opening Pair
The team has suffered a lot in previous years due to unsettled opening pairs. It has even done a lot of experiments but were not good enough to give good results for a long time.
Now this team has one of the best opening pairs in the world. The team captain Babar Azam, who is also number one in the ranking, comes at the crease with Mhummad Rizwan who is number 3 in the world. This top professional duo had been undefeatable in T20 WorldCup 2021 and made a partnership of 151.
Both these batsmen have different techniques of hitting the ball. Babar Azam is cool and calm and plays sensibly whereas Rizwan seems busy on the pitch, he moves so much that bowlers get confused. Both of them can play fast and spin bowling equally well. For the teams coming against them, they need to cater to these two batsmen in the early stages of batting to win the match.
Shaheen Shah Afridi
The Afridi factor may be dominant in this tournament. He is one of the good discoveries of the Pakistan Super League. This player dismissed the top order of India real quick in the high-intensity match last year and help his team win the game. The same man can repeat the same performance.
In recent months, he worked on his technique and made it even better. The performance against other Asian teams in ODIs was also commendable. He can turn the game in his favor at a critical stage of the match.
Settled Playing 11
Unlike other teams in the Asia Cup, Pakistan’s playing 11 is better settled. They are the initial ones to name a 15-member squad as they were sure who all will play. They kept on playing with this squad in recent fixtures as well. All the fifteen players had enough practice to play any big match in Asia Cup 2022.
The other favorite India has made several changes and given chance to many players in recent matches. So, it indicates a lack of surety and also uncertainty prevails when a lot of options are available to you in scenarios like this.
Stay in touch with Betjee for more analysis and predictions of matches being played in the world. Our professionals made analyses based on their personal experience and with help of performance graphs made by a number of Artificial intelligence softwares.