Twitter lashes out at Sarfraz Ahmed for bagging a duck in the first Test against South Africa

Pakistan visited South Africa for a long tour with the Test series to be played. The rainbow nation is by no means an easy country to play Test cricket and the Sarfraz Ahmed-led side must’ve already realised it. They opted to bat first after winning the toss on the Boxing Day in Centurion and the surface was not at all easy to bat with the hosts’ bowlers breathing fire. Moreover, Sarfraz Ahmed, their skipper, also failed to lead from the front and bagged a duck.

Pakistan batsmen looked unsure about their shot selection and the likes Kagiso Rabada, Duanne Olivier and Dale Steyn proved to be too good for them. The tourists seemed to be under some sort of pressure having lost a home series against New Zealand in the UAE. Before coming to South Africa, there was a lot of deliberation over Sarfraz’s captaincy in the longest format and yet another failure has only increased the criticism.

Poor form with the bat

Sarfraz Ahmed has been struggling with the bat in Tests especially. Apart from a brilliant knock here and there the Pakistan captain hasn’t been able to lead from the front. His struggles continued in South Africa as well and Olivier castled him. He never got used to the pace of the pitch and was undone by the on-fire Olivier for a four-ball duck. He left his team reeling at 86/6 in the 29th over.

As far as Sarfraz’s Test career is concerned, he has scored 2545 runs in 47 Test matches at a decent average of 37.43 with three centuries and 16 half-centuries. But on the contrary, he has managed to muster only 337 runs in nine matches at a mediocre average of only 25.92 which proves that the cricketer is not having an auspicious outing in the whites this year.

It will be interesting to see how Sarfraz approaches the second innings now as there will be a lot of pressure on him to perform.

Here’s how Twitter reacted to Sarfraz’s failure:

[interaction id=”5c21c7ef2a8a2d4031aa14ed”]

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