While its unfortunate that we could not make it to the final, we must appreciate our team’s performance over all!

And while its also true that our team made ‘a few’ highly costly mistakes towards the end of the semi-final, it must not be forgotten that those mistakes were a result of the ‘huge’ magnitude of frustration that had resulted due to the extremely poor and ‘apparently’ biased decisions by the umpires against Pakistan!

We must not over look the wrong LBW given to Umar Akmal when he was at the top of his form and was leading the target to some tough total.

We must not forget the LBWs appeals of Saeed Ajmal, Shahid Afridi and Rana Naveed turned down by the Umpires, while two of them had been confirmed OUT later in the replay and sky-scope projection. And the third one was also close enough to be declared out.

All such events had occured way before Pakistan started making a few mistakes that confirmed their exit.

Although the drop by Younus Khan was probably the most crucial one, but we CANNOT blame him for the loss!

And while the New Zealanders had been giving short pitch bowls during their fielding, ’same’ were declared wides when bowled by Pakistani bowlers! [ref: the match! and a leading newspaper of Pakistan dated 5 October 2009]

It is also written in one of the leading newspapers of Pakistan dated 5th October 2009 that it was quite obvious that some ‘campaign’ was under progress to oust Pakistan in the semis!

We must not forget that the ICC is being ruled by majority of the Indians, with CEO also an Indian. And its been a hot issue in India that Pakistan had lost to Australia deliberately to throw India out of the series. These facts force one’s mind to ponder about the reasons behind such poor and biased umpiring against Pakistan! The newspaper also quoted that the umpires had later apologized to Umar Akmal for wrong decision! Who is now responsible? And this is ‘one’ of the at least four wrong decisions that has officially been accepted wrong! Now who is to be blamed? The one single drop by Younus? Although it would have made a difference but I repeat that we cannot put the blame on that mistake!

Therefore my point of view is that we must pay tribute to our team which has made us proud at so many occasions. Although we became victim of repeatedly-biased umpiring, but we must look forward and wish our team best of luck for the future!

We must not expect them to win every world title in a row! They performed excellent and they were probably the best team of the tournament, better than Australia who have just won the series!

And I strongly support the point that Younus Khan is the captain we had been looking for for the past decade! He has such leadership skills like Imran Khan. He has the ability to lead our team to the World Champions![Inshallah]. We often give reference of the great team of 1992 Champions, but we must remember that they were also struggling at one stage in 1992 World Cup, and it was the rain that saved the day for Pakistan! Allah’s help was with them then, and Inshallah will also be with our team, and Inshallah we will be on the top soon!

These are my very own comments. I could be wrong at certain point, but I firmly believe in my point of view that biased umpiring has cost us this trophy! Your comments are more than welcome.

WELL DONE TEAM PAKISTAN! LONG LIVE PAKISTAN!

[guest post by:Ahmed Mustafa Hashmi]