Three reasons for Pakistan's struggle as an ODI team
Gone are the days when captain Inzamam-Ul-Haq lead the Pakistani cricket team from the front, gone are the days when Younus Khan and Mohammed Yousuf provided stability in the middle order, gone are the days when Misbah-Ul-Haq or Shahid Afridi came on and finished the things in style and gone are the days when people used to fear the men in green. In 2017, when captain Sarfraz Ahmed lead his team to a stunning upset victory over the Indian national team in the ICC Champions Trophy, it finally looked like Pakistan was getting back on track as their last major highlight was becoming the number one test team in the world in 2016.
Things, however, have not clicked this year and from the sixth position, Pakistan have fallen back to seventh place, just ahead of West Indies and Bangladesh. In terms of the cricket games too, victories have just not come into their stride with the team facing tragic losses early on in the year against New Zealand and even though they performed well enough against Zimbabwe, India has given them a brutal reality check in the Asia Cup by inflicting two humiliating losses. It does seem like 2017 has been put far away and the hurt is back for the Pakistani fans but there are reasons as to why the team is struggling in this format :
1) Lack of Confidence
The biggest testimony to this is their coach Mickey Arthur himself. Dubbing the recent loss over India as one of the worst in the country's history, Mickey Arthur went on to use the words "confidence crisis". For a team that already began the year with a crushing set of defeats against a very good New Zealand team, it was evident that confidence wouldn't really be that high and even though expectations might have risen after Zimbabwe, India would have crushed it completely.
The "fear of losing again" were the set of words used from the coach himself and such a state in the dressing team usually leads to panic and it needs players with some really good leadership skills to prevent a complete fall-out and failure.