That Pakistan's T20 World Cup campaign is over well before the knockout stage is hardly a surprise; Pakistan have never made it that far in a women's ICC event. It is barely an indictment, either; Pakistan were placed in the significantly harder group at this tournament. With three legitimate title contenders in Australia, India and South Africa in a group of six out of which only two were going to qualify, they were never in realistic contention for a semi-final berth. Pakistan are at a very different stage in their journey.
Pakistan's win over Netherlands - a battle for the wooden spoon they should not be contesting - was their first in eight games at the T20 World Cup. Since a win over West Indies in 2020, it was just their third T20 World Cup victory in 15 matches, the other two coming against Sri Lanka and Ireland. In the last five editions, they have won one match apiece, finishing bottom but one in their group each time. The only sides to do worse in their groups in each edition were Ireland, Thailand, Ireland, Sri Lanka and Netherlands respectively.
There is even less encouragement to be gleaned from the Women's ODI World Cup; they were the only side to finish winless at last year's edition, duly propping up the table, something they have done in each of the last four editions in a run stretching back to 2013. Since 2010, Pakistan have lost 21 of 22 matches at the ODI World Cup.
For it to count as a journey, though, there has to be some evidence of forward locomotion. The Pakistan side appears parked somewhere along the side of the road, possibly out of fuel, occasionally chugging into gear, and then heading off in the wrong direction. Pakistan women's cricket's long-suffering supporters do not follow the team in search for glory so much as the satisfaction of seeing what has the buddings of an exciting team beginning to realise its potential. And it is that squandering of promise that will make this campaign so unforgivable.
Supporters of this side may have tolerated a defeat-laden campaign, but Pakistan appeared intent on box-ticking all the mistakes that everyone at the time knew were mistakes, and then made them anyway. They failed in precisely the way any discerning follower feared they might. Some of those were selectorial. Iram Javed, with a career batting average of 10.06 and a strike rate in the low 80s over a 60-match T20I career, was picked as a specialist batter, and finished with 36 runs in four games.
Aliya Riaz's inclusion was similarly criticised the moment the squads were announced, and is understood to have had a destablising role within the group, and an ineffectual one on the ground. She contributed 35 in her four outings, and was responsible for at least three dropped catches. Diana Baig, too, was left out for the best part of the campaign, replaced by Tasmia Rubab, who conceded 41 and 40 in her two outings in defeats against India and Bangladesh. The latter was a particularly ignominious loss that illustrated how deep Pakistan's confidence had sunk, stumbling from 70 for 2 in 11 overs to 84 for 8.
Bestraddling it all is Wahab Riaz, a central figure in this environment. Since he ended his playing career, Wahab has taken on a number of high-profile positions, without it ever being especially clear why he'd earned his current role or learned enough from it to be valuable to the one he was moving on to. In 2023, he was appointed advisor to then Punjab chief minister Mohsin Naqvi - now PCB chairman - for "sports and youth affairs" before being appointed the chief selector for the men's side later in the year.
His most famous moment in that role was a public rebuke of Haris Rauf for ostensibly refusing to make himself available for Pakistan's Test tour of Australia. For that, Rauf's central contract was ripped up a few weeks later, only for Naqvi, now in situ at the PCB, to reinstate it. Wahab would shortly thereafter be demoted from that role before being dismissed from the selection committee altogether.
Thereafter he began to be channelled into the women's game, where he recently served as the team mentor before being upgraded to head coach. It is unclear if this campaigns spells the end of his involvement with the women's side.
It is worth remembering that, until not long ago, there was cautious optimism about the women's side, particularly in T20 cricket. From 2014 to 2020, Pakistan won six of their 17 T20 World Cup matches, with the 2010s bringing wins over India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Indies. In September 2023, Pakistan whitewashed South Africa 3-0 in Karachi, and followed it up with a T20I series win over New Zealand away; they remain, to date, the only Asian side to have won a T20I series in that country. It was around that time that Fatima Sana began to come into her own; she is currently among the game's best allrounders, and arguably at the peak of her powers.
Those powers, though, may end up being best expressed on the franchise circuit. Sana has already been signed up to the Hundred, and with the malaise the national team is in, it appears unlikely the PCB will be able to muster the effort needed to turn the ship around in her prime. The next T20 Women's World Cup is scheduled to be held in Pakistan, and should have been a moment to build towards to showcase the best of the country's women's side to a country that still hasn't fully bought into the team.
But on current trends, it might just be another event that happens and moves on from Pakistan without leaving any cultural footprint. The apparent lack of administrative interest in women's cricket at the moment, or any public concern for its alarming slide, makes it far from a guarantee that this World Cup exit, like so many that preceded it, represents anything other than a miserable footnote from which there will always be a distraction to move onto.