Shoaib Akhtar is pained to witness Australia’s poor show

2018 has been a forgettable year for Australia, especially since the shambolic ball-tampering scandal at Cape Town in South Africa back in March. To add insult to injury, two of their most reliable cricketers in David Warner and Steve Smith got banned for a year each and their exclusion weakened the Australian team to a significant extent without a doubt.

The omissions have impacted them so much that they have strained to win even a single match without the duo for the last seven months. They lost the final Test at Wanderers in Johannesburg and then went on to lose five overseas ODIs and one T20I against England. Albeit they won a few matches in Zimbabwe, the Aussies looked far from convincing.

Akhtar highly disappointed

Tim Paine and Co are currently playing a two-match Test series against Pakistan and have shown some good cricket in patches. In the first Test in Dubai, some resistance from the top order ensured that they eschew a defeat. However, the visiting team is currently on the brink of a defeat in the second Test at Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.

With a couple of days remaining, they need 491 runs with nine wickets in hand and the odds are well and truly stacked against the visitors. In the meantime, former Pakistani seamer Shoaib Akhtar is disappointed to see the Australian team getting tamed time and again. Moreover, he reminisced a time when Australia used to make Pakistan work hard for their victories.

He took to Twitter and wrote, “Still remember the mighty Australian team playing against Pak back in 1999 giving us run for our money & now it’s really painful to see the performances of weakest Australian team which is not right up there.. Just wondering what happened to rich Australian Cricket culture??”

Here is Akhtar’s tweet

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