Pak in WI: A tough competition is on the cards

Dr. Naveed Yazdani

Pakistan and West Indies will face each other for three ODI and two Test matches in the coming weeks. Pakistan is basking in the glory of victories against India while West Indies are struggling against the South Africans in Test matches. Nothing can be predicted with certainty but the recent performance of both the sides might establish a trend from where one can perhaps try to project the outcomes.

We will compare the two sides separately for Test and ODIs. For the sake of keeping the focus on recent form and validity, I have considered last 15 Tests and 10 ODIs played by both the sides. Let’s look at their performance under the two versions of the game separately.

Test Matches

Pakistan emerges as clear favorites in this version of the game. The last 15 Tests played by Pakistan are summarized in the Table 1. The same analysis for West Indies is given in Table 2.

Pakistan with an overall win percentage of 33% have performed much better than the West Indian (with a meager win% of 6.67), especially after considering the fact that the sole West Indian Test victory in recent times was against Bangladesh at home!

ODIs

Things are quite close and tighter when it comes to ODIs. West Indies seem to enjoy the benefit of winning a major tournament (ICC Champions Trophy) whereas Pakistan’s moral will be sky high after their 4-2 drubbing of the Indians in India. The performance of these two sides in their last 10 matches is summarized in Table 3:

Pakistan with a better win percentage and better NR/o (Net Runs per Over) has performed marginally better than the West Indians and one can expect a much closer ODI series as compared the Test matches. So watch out for the ODIs, in Tests Pakistan might prove too strong for the West Indies.

Table 1
Pakistan
At Home    Won Lost Drawn Win %
7          3   3    1     42.85
Overseas
8          2   4    2     25.00
Overall
15         5   7    3     33.33

Table 2
West Indies
At Home    Won Lost Drawn Win %
8          1   4    3     12.5
Overseas
7          0   6    1     -
Overall
15         1   10   4     6.67

Table 3
Pakistan
Mt  Won Lost NR  Win% R/o for  R/o against  NR/o
10  6   4    0   60   5.51     5.17         +0.34

West Indies                            
Mt  Won Lost NR  Win% R/o for  R/o against  NR/o
10  5   4    1   50   5.04     4.8          +0.24

Dr. Naveed Yazdani (annyazdani@hotmail.com) is a
freelance Cricket writer and analyst.