Pakistan captain Salman Agha's dismissive smirk after Afghanistan called Asia's 'second-best team' in front Rashid Khan

Pakistan’s new T20I captain Salman Agha has the task of trying to get the team to a stage where they can compete for silverware again. Only a few days away from the start of the 2025 Asia Cup, Agha will want to establish Pakistan’s credentials as a team that is a contender and a challenger when it comes to latter stages of tournaments, but a team in transition, they have a lot of work to do. Salman Ali Agha speaks in an interview following Pakistan's T20I vs West Indies.(AFP)

Pakistan’s results in T20 competitions of late have been subpar to say the least, looking uncompetitive against the better teams and dropping too many matches against teams historically considered to be a tier below. Results such as the super over loss to USA during the 2024 World Cup even prompted one journalist, Shahid Hashmi, to make a bold statement: as per Hashmi, Pakistan’s slip was so poor that semifinalists Afghanistan were now the second-best team in Asia.

When this opinion was voiced at a press conference during Pakistan’s ongoing tri-series in the UAE as a warm up for the Asia Cup, Pakistan skipper Agha wasn’t best pleased. A screengrab from the conference shows an extremely bemused Agha with a slight smile reacting to the take.

However, Hashmi was quick to take to social media to cover his bases and quickly clarify exactly what he had meant to convey. Rather than stating that Afghanistan were now a better team than Pakistan, the intention was just to highlight that they had the second-best performance at the T20 World Cup, behind champions India.

On his X profile, Hashmi wrote “Journalist, and that’s me, said: Afghanistan finished as the second best Asian team in T20 World Cup 2024.” Afghanistan would qualify from the group stages, but the truly dramatic scenes were to follow later in the Super 8. Afghanistan notched a memorable victory over Australia, which put them in pole position to reach the semifinals, and sealed that spot with an iconic win over Bangladesh.

Whether or not Afghanistan are currently a stronger T20 unit than a Pakistan team going through the motions of a transition is up to the jury, but with the two teams kicking off the tri-series with a match against one another in Sharjah tonight, a pretty strong indication one way or the other will be provided.

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