Head-to-head would have been fairer: Arthur

LONDON: Pakistan and New Zealand both finished the group stages of the World Cup with 11 points apiece. However, Pakistan defeated the Black Caps convincingly at Edgbaston.

But New Zealand are in the semi-finals while Pakistan are on their way home after failing to make the cut because of an inferior net run-rate.

There has been a lot of criticism over the mechanism and on Friday evening Mickey Arthur, Pakistan’s head coach joined the chorus.

Arthur expressed his disappointment over the use of net run-rate to decide the semi-final line-up and instead suggested that head-to-head would have been a fairer way to separate the teams leveled on points.

“I would have liked the ICC to consider head-to-head because tonight we would be in the semi-final,” he told reporters after Pakistan thrashed Bangladesh by 94 runs at Lord’s on Friday.

“It is disappointing, and it just goes back to our first game (a heavy defeat) against the West Indies.

“And we had an opportunity to beat Australia, and we didn’t take that. Those are the two nightmares I’m going to have. What the system has done to us is that after one very poor game, you really battle to recover again.

“So it’s a very disappointed dressing room, no congratulations going on because we haven’t qualified. Congratulations to the four who have, I think they’ve played the best cricket so far and may the best team win. But it is nice for us to sit here and know we’ve beaten two of those teams [England and New Zealand] which shows we’re not a mile off in terms of ourselves as a cricket team.”

Pakistan’s victory against Bangladesh was their fourth consecutive win in the tournament. They failed to qualify for the last four despite beating two of the semi-finalists – England and New Zealand.

It was their heavily one-sided defeat against West Indies in their very first game of the tournament that really dented their net run-rate and even five wins could not help them lift it. In the end, Pakistan were left needing a win by a whopping margin of 300-plus runs against Bangladesh to overtake New Zealand in terms of net run-rate. It turned out to be an impossible task.