ODIs are the worst

Thoughts on Pakistan's failure to directly qualify for the 2025 Cricket World Cup and how we're not-good-quite-terrible at ODIs

There were 10 teams participating in the ICC Women’s Championship 2022-2025. Pakistan was the first team to be eliminated. Our closest counterparts, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, are both well-placed to qualify directly for the 2025 Cricket World Cup – though as it stands, it seems to me that Sri Lanka have a better shot than Bangladesh. Meanwhile, we were never really in the running to directly qualify, considering we won only 3 ODIs out of 18 in the last 2 years.

Let’s be clear here: after nearly 30 years of playing this sport, Pakistan should not be in this position. We should not be the first to be relegated to the ODI Qualifiers. Heck, we should not have to play the Qualifiers at all. I’d go as far as to say that we should be close to or matching India’s level by now, challenging them consistently and successfully. Instead, in T20is, apart from the odd win or close-fought loss here and there, our record is poor. Worse still, in ODIs, we get hammered, and it’s never even close.

This is a telling pattern, one we see versus other competitors too.

At the risk of over-simplifying things, remember, we won 3-0 vs South Africa in the T20is, only to lose the ODI series. We beat New Zealand 2-1 in T20is, and then went on to lose all but one in the ODI series – and that one win came courtesy of a super over. Earlier, in contrast, we beat Ireland 3-0 in the ODIs and then lost the T20i series that same tour. This is often the way it goes: we’re much more likely to challenge top teams in T20is and conversely, get challenged by so-called “low tier” teams here too.

This happens because T20is are typically the closest you can get to an even playing field in cricket. On the other hand, ODIs remain the bane of our existence. Versus almost all full-member teams, we’re lucky to win the odd game, and even that requires favourable conditions (read: where nothing much happens with the ball as we bat) and favourable situations (read: where the opposition collapses under 180 and we DON’T collapse almost immediately).

This too is not surprising: ODIs tend to reflect the truest skill and fitness level in women’s cricket and reward you accordingly. For us, that basically means they’re the worst.

They’re long, they’re tiring, they require more than a Fatima Sana cameo or Sadia Iqbal’s powerplay breakthroughs. They ask us to field 50 overs without faltering, to keep our rhythm throughout our bowling spells, to survive the new ball with the bat and up the tempo when the ball gets old, to construct individual innings and the team’s innings too, to look alive in the field even when we’re 90 overs into the day.

The ODI format destroys the pretty illusion that T20i wins create about the trajectory of our team. It exposes the fragility of Pakistan Women’s Cricket, the negligence in our system, the stagnation in our development. It tells you, this is a team with administrators who refuse to fund red-ball domestic cricket or U19 one-day cricket. Who can’t find it in them to regularly incorporate one-day fixtures at international or domestic levels even for the senior team. Who cancel fitness tests and when asked why, shrug and point fingers at each other.

This is a team that debuted a teenager in ODIs in 2023, despite her having no recent domestic one day experience, simply because they felt they had no better option waiting in the wings (mind you, they would’ve known their options if they actually had regular club-level feeder tournaments and senior domestic tournaments with enough teams to try out new players).

This is a team who have rested their then-vice-captain and lead bowler for alternate ODI games in the past, because they simply could not keep up with the demands of the format.

This is a team, which, when its performances are adjusted to its opponents, is possibly no better at ODI cricket than the one that represented us at our first proper World Cup. The gap is wide and widens still.

Unfortunately, there are people in there who still don’t quite get it. They think that Pakistan’s relegation to the World Cup Qualifiers is not something to lose sleep over, and worse, that it is not a systemic failure. They think that country-wide trials will paper over cracks in our scouting and development pathway, that stop-start domestic tournaments will make up for the lack of consistent domestic calendar, that it’s okay if we have a gap of roughly 17 months between our last ODI series and the actual World Cup. Of course, considering our recent record and the quality of opponents we’re likely to face in the Qualifiers, we may not even make that World Cup.

But we shouldn't worry, right? Right.

ODIs are not a cause for concern.

This is ALL part of the plan — whatever that is.