While international cricket gradually began returning to the country in small bursts from May 2015, with the Test series against Sri Lanka in December completing the comeback across formats, the previous decade can best be described in one word permanently fixed with Pakistan cricket over the past 10 years: exile.
Therefore, any look back at Pakistan cricket over this period would inevitably have to hinge around the one off-field factor that dictated matters on the pitch for the national side. In that regard, perhaps it just hasn’t been emphasised enough how much Pakistan actually did manage to achieve in this decade without any cricket at home.
The 2000s had ended with the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team virtually ending any hopes of Pakistan hosting cricket in the near future, and the 2010s began with three high profile Pakistani cricketers being convicted for spot-fixing. The task at the start of the decade, hence, was rebuilding the side, all the while building a new home elsewhere.
Keeping that in mind, Pakistan’s semifinal finish at the 2011 World Cup was a great achievement, despite the disappointment of the knockout loss against India at Mohali. However, while that team carried similar momentum that traditionally makes Pakistan a dangerous single-tournament team, the long-term reconstruction work was being done elsewhere.
It hasn’t been emphasized enough how much Pakistan achieved despite not playing any cricket at home
In the first half of the previous decade Pakistan evolved from an average Test team to being a daunting challenge in the UAE to being crowned the number one Test side in 2016. The ICC Test Mace is an achievement that, for many, ranks alongside, if not above, the 1992 ODI World Cup triumph given the pedigree of the format.
Between 2010 and 2017, Test highlights saw Pakistan clean sweeping the likes of Australia and England in the UAE and winning away to New Zealand. The pulsating 2-2 series away to England in 2016 ended up pushing up Pakistan to the summit of the Test rankings. The national side’s first ever Test series win in the West Indies in May 2017 was also the swansong for Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan.
Meanwhile, even though Pakistan’s winning percentage in ODIs came down in the 2010s, as compared to the previous decade, the team did manage a few striking achievements. In 2012 Pakistan won its second ever Asia Cup tournament. That was followed in 2013 by Pakistan becoming the first Asian side to beat South Africa – then a truly formidable unit – in an ODI series on their home turf. The team also bagged an ODI series win in 2012/13 away to India – the last bilateral Indo-Pak series.
After a quarterfinal finish at the 2015 World Cup left us wondering what could’ve been, the new look Pakistan team peaked at the 2017 Champions Trophy – winning the second most illustrious ODI tournament. Failure to make the knockout stages at the 2019 World Cup brought the curtains down on the previous management, with their successors taking over on the brink of the culmination of the decade, as the Test side struggled in the post-#MisYou era as well.
The 2010s were an interesting decade for Pakistan cricket in the T20 realm, given that the 2000s had seen the side finish runners-up at the 2007 tournament and winning the 2009 edition. While success eluded Pakistan at the World T20s in the 2010s, the side managed to keep a grip on the top T20I ranking 2016 onwards under the captaincy of Sarfaraz Ahmed. Between August 2016 and November 2018 Pakistan managed to win a record 11 successive T20I series.
However, 2019 saw a string of failures for Pakistan in the shortest format, eventually resulting in a change in leadership, despite which the team still ended the decade as the number one side in T20s, with new skipper Babar Azam being the top ranked player in the format for two success years.
Again, the story of the previous decade was as much about bringing cricket to Pakistan as it was about the national team’s performance. Starting off with Zimbabwe playing ODIs and T20Is in the country in May 2015, the country began increasingly hosting the Pakistan Super League (PSL) beginning with the final in 2017 to now hosting the entire league in the country in 2020.
In between, West Indies, Sri Lanka (thrice) and a strong ICC World XI side toured Pakistan. There is hope that Bangladesh would follow suit in the coming week, as Pakistan hopes to bring all and every kind of cricket to the country.
One hopes that 2020s would see Pakistan hosting almost all its cricket at home. With the new management under Misbah-ul-Haq, the team should look to follow the lead of the ICC Test winning side of the previous decade, and the T20I unit should eye replication of the performances of the last couple of years. The ODIs might be the toughest challenge, but the advent of PSL has seen an influx of new talent, which will only continue to increase over this decade.