No doubt an obscure Pakistani politician will seek their five minutes in the sun by claiming that his national side threw the match, but in truth Pakistan were comprehensively outplayed by Australia in St Lucia yesterday.
Shahid Afridi and his men must be sick at the sight of the green and gold, and given this was Pakistan's tenth successive defeat in a row across all formats against Australia, one wonders how much of it is psychological.
Catches were dropped, pies were chucked and wickets were thrown away with wild abandon as Pakistan yet again behaved like the victim to Australia's playground bully. And Shane Watson in particular enjoyed taking sweets off of Pakistan's terrified bowlers. Only Mohammad Aamer, Saeed Ajmal and Misbah-ul-Haq emerged with any credit from the game.
Everyone predicted that Shahid Afridi's captaincy would be as schizophrenic as his batting and he certainly didn't disappoint yesterday. If the decision to bowl Mohammad Hafeez in the second over was strange, the fact that Afridi allowed him to bowl four of the first ten overs was just plain bizarre.
The perplexing nature of Afridi's captaincy spread to his troops and the result was as inevitable as Gordon Brown's eviction from 10 Downing Street come this Friday.
It would seem that for Pakistan to perform against Australia they first each need to spend some time on the psychologists couch to rid themselves of their nightmares of green, gold, Rolf Harris and Lara Bingle. Only then will they have a chance of breaking the losing habit against Australia.
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