How many runs does each Pakistan top-order batter add or cost the team?
How it works: impact asks whether Pakistan would have scored more or fewer runs with an average batter from a top-10 team in that position. It counts both the runs scored and the balls used to get them, since slow scoring eats balls the batters after you could have used. Only regular players are counted for every team.
Why only 6 Pakistani batters?
Because they're the only ones Pakistan has stuck with. Over the last 3 years we've cycled through a huge number of players without really trying any of them: two or three games, then out.
Keeper is the clearest example. Ghazi, Haseebullah, Saad and Usman Khan have all been given a go, and none of them has played more than 5 ODIs.
Nobody gets the chance to settle, so these six are the only ones with enough games to judge.
The Players:
Saim Ayub (+5.3)
An elite opener in this period. Adds about 5 runs an innings over an average opener, and the only opening combo better than him is India's. Everyone else's opening combos are behind him.
Fakhar Zaman (+1.1)
Fakhar is getting older and you can see the dip. He's no longer the destroyer he was a few years ago. That said, the numbers still have him as a decent opener: slightly above world average and ahead of most teams' opening combos, but not elite. Australia, England and India all do better.
Abdullah Shafique (−22.7)
One of the worst openers to play ODI in the last 3 years. He costs Pakistan almost 23 runs every time he bats compared with an average opener, which is a huge hole to dig at the top of an innings. Unless something changes drastically in his game, his ODI career should be finished.
Babar Azam (−8.4)
No.3 is the most important batting spot in ODIs, and they have the highest avg as your best player usually bats at 3. The job is to bat long while still keeping a decent scoring rate.
Unfortunately Babar has been scoring less and much slower than the the rest of the world. He's only ahead of his counterparts from Afg and Bng which makes Pakistan the 8th best of the top 10.
Salman Agha (+14.0)
Pakistan's best batter in this period by a huge distance. He's been elite and ranks among the top 3 middle-order batters in the world. A whopping 14 extra runs to Pakistan's total every inn. By every metric, he has been world class.
Mohammad Rizwan (−4.3)
Rizwan has been a consistent scorer in the middle but has batted too slow and thus has been costinf the team 4 runs every time he bats. What's worse is that for whatever reason he seems to be getting slower each year.
The bottom line
Three of these six are net positives for Pakistan which means 2 questionable spots in the batting.
Babar and Rizwan together are costing about 13 runs every innings. And that's against the world avg. Compared to top 5 teams, it gets much worse.
With the World Cup only a few games away, there's no time to build a backup or replacement for Babar. We just have to hope he gets back to being the ODI batter he used to be.
For Rizwan's slot, they have to pick one player (Saad or whomever) and stick with it.
Same for #6. Stop the revolving door and let someone actually make the spot their own.
