The year 2023 is over and so is Pakistan’s performance. It has been quite a see-saw journey for the national team. Babar Azam’s resignation after the poor ODI World Cup and the Asia Cup were always on the cards and their rise to No.1 ODI rank were the biggest highlights of that year. There was a good share of both highs and lows. We take a look at Pakistan Cricket in 2023, what went right and what went wrong.
The national team played five Test matches, 25 One Day matches and 11 T20I matches. They won two Tests, 14 ODIs and just four T20 games, having a total wins of 20 out of 41 games that were played this year.
| Format | Played | Wins | Losses | T/NR | Draw | W/L % |
| Test | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1.00 |
| ODI | 25 | 14 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 1.40 |
| T20I | 11 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0.67 |
| Total | 41 | 20 | 18 | 2 | 1 | 1.11 |
As we always do, we will look into the details of the performances for the year 2023.
Pakistan Cricket in 2023: A breakdown
Test
The year began with Pakistan taking on New Zealand in two Test matches. The first Test ended in a draw played on Boxing Day (26th-30th December 2022).
The second Test was no different, as the Green Team escaped a series loss. Sarfaraz Ahmed, who was making his Test comeback, scored his first century in seven years and helped them draw the match when New Zealand had the upper hand. Sarfaraz was named as the Player of the Series with three Fifties and a hundred.
This ended Pakistan’s 2023 World Test Championship cycle which was considered the easiest cycle which they could not take advantage of.
Also Read: Why Pakistan failed in the World Test Championship 2023?
But the tides turned quickly as Pakistan’s 2025 World Test Championship cycle began with a 2-0 series win over Sri Lanka. Saud Shakeel emerged as the series champion with his magnificent run, scoring 295 runs in three innings including his first double.
After Babar Azam’s end as a leader, Shan Masood took over the captaincy duties and led the table-topped national team to Australia and tried to change history as they had not beaten the Aussies in Test cricket in 28 years.
And while their performances were much better than their horrible show in the 2019 tour, they still lost the series. This ends Pakistan’s five Test matches in two wins and two losses with one draw in 2023.
T20 Internationals
Pakistan played a total of two T20I series and one competition; the Asian Games Men’s Cricket Competition.
They started the year taking on Afghanistan in a three-match series. A fresh and young side was picked shortly after the conclusion of PSL 9 where the main players rested.
The young side were defeated by the experienced Afghanistan team by 2-1. In between, the stand-in captain Shadab Khan became the only Pakistani bowler to pick 100 wickets.
Also Read: AFG vs PAK Series: List of All the Records Broken
The next series was played against New Zealand. The five-match series was drawn 2-2 with Pakistan winning the first two and New Zealand winning the third and fifth games. The fourth game was washed out.
After winning the second T20I, Babar Azam became the joint most successful T20I captain of all time. An achievement that went highly unnoticed.
The Asian Games Men’s Cricket Competition was played in China. A young side was sent for the competition without its main players. This team was led by Qasim Akram. However, the national side failed to win any medals. They lost to Afghanistan in the semi-finals and to Bangladesh in the third-place play-offs.
Pakistan Cricket in 2023: The Horrible Asia Cup and the World Cup and Babar’s end of captaincy
We will discuss the One Day cricket here with the Asia Cup and the World Cup being the centre talk.
Before the two events, Pakistan played a total of 11 ODI matches; Eight against New Zealand and three against Afghanistan.
They lost the three-match series against the Kiwis, which was a part of the now-scrapped World Cup Super League by 2-1. But won the next series by 4-1 against a slightly weaker squad. This 4-1 series win resulted in the national team becoming the No.1 ODI team for the very first time in their history.
Before the Asia Cup, the national team played a three-match series against Afghanistan. And while they had batting issues against their opponent’s spin quality, they clean-swept the series.
The disastrous three months of big events.
The Asia Cup started with Pakistan winning the first two of their three games; a massive win over Nepal and a wash-out game against India before winning against Bangladesh in their first game of Super 4s.
Then came against India. Originally, that game was supposed to be played on just one day. But PCB decided to have a reserved day for that one specific game. And, as all fans said, that “cursed” reserved day was when everything went down for the side.
A heavy defeat to India in that match followed by a nail-biting loss against Sri Lanka saw Pakistan eliminated in the group stage. To make it worse, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah had injury concerns and the latter was eventually ruled out from the mega-tournament.
The ODI World Cup was not sweet either. Pakistan managed to win only against the Netherlands, a record chase against Sri Lanka which became the highest in the World Cup, Bangladesh and a rain-effect win over New Zealand.
They lost to India, and Australia, a thriller to South Africa, a shocking loss to Afghanistan and England. This resulted in them being eliminated with four wins out of nine with a win-loss of 0.8, their worst since the 1983 edition.
Failures of two back-to-back tournaments saw Babar Azam step down as Pakistan’s all-formats captain and straight away Shan Masood and Shaheen Afridi were appointed for Tests and T20Is respectively. The ODI captain is yet to be announced.
You can read Babar Azam’s report card here: How good was Babar Azam as Pakistan Captain?
With 2023 done, we hope 2024 to be better for Pakistan cricket and see them achieve new heights.
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