Pat Cummins has complained about one of his side’s “worst” ever performances after Australia slumped to their biggest ODI defeat in Friday night’s home game second match against Pakistan at the Adelaide Oval, where Marnus Labuschagne’s struggle with the bat continued this season. Labuschagne was one of five Aussie batters to fall to Pakistani quick Haris Rauf, who claimed 5-29 and helped bowl out the home side for 163 after just 35 overs.

In reply, Pakistan openers Saim Ayub (82 off 71) and Abdullah Shafique (64 not out) made light work of the meager total to chase down Australia’s target for the loss of just one wicket. The Pakistan openers combined to score 137 runs in just 20.1 overs before Adam Zampa claimed Australia’s only wicket of the match, dismissing the impressive Ayub.

However, that was as good as it got for the home side, with Pakistan wrapping things up six overs later and sealing the win with a whopping 141 balls to spare. Australia had suffered nine-wicket losses at home only three times – the last coming in 1992 when the West Indies won with 69 balls to spare.

Australia also suffered a similar defeat against South Africa in 1992 and against the West Indies again in 1984, but Pakistan’s victory with 141 balls to spare is somehow Australia’s biggest loss at home. Rauf (5-29) was Adelaide’s main destroyer with his second five-wicket haul in ODIs after dismissing Josh Inglis, Labuschagne, Aaron Hardie and Glenn Maxwell in a devastating spell that saw the Aussies collapse from 2-79 to 7- 129.

Australian openers Matt Short (19) and Jake Fraser-McGurk (13) both started well again but failed to silence critics of their enthusiastic batting approach. Short was caught by Babar Azam off the bowling of Shaheen Shah Afridi, who also trapped Fraser-McGurk LBW as the young gun tried to hit a ball towards the boundary that was unlikely to be there to be hit.

“It’s probably a ball you have to defend. It probably deserved a bit of respect, that delivery,” said Mark Waugh on Fox Cricket. “It’s a balancing act, isn’t it? He’ll be so frustrated. Sometimes when you see the ball so well early on, you tend to relax. Sometimes that overconfidence can come back to bite you. We’ve all been there. ” .”

RELATED:

Top scorer Steve Smith (35) and Josh Inglis (18) were again asked to form a partnership for Australia as they did in game one, but Rauf had other ideas. The Pakistani quick removed Inglis first after gloving a delivery down the leg side into the grateful clutches of wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan.

Marnus Labuschagne goes cheap again as the battle continues

That left Labuschagne in trouble but for the second match in a row the Aussie Test star was undone by Rauf after moving one ahead of Rizwan for just six points. Form has continued to be poor this season for Labuschagne, who has passed 50 just once for Queensland in the Sheffield Shield. The Test star has a highest score of just 22 from his last five innings in red-ball and white-ball cricket and former Aussie cricket star Chadd Sayers says his form is worrying ahead of the five-Test series against India, starting in Perth on November 22.

“Harris Rauf again… he just brings a lot of energy. It looked like a good ball, it just left Marnus at a good length and his poor form continues, so it was taken to Rizwan,” Sayers said. SEN’s reporting. Even in the domestic start to the season he didn’t really look threatening, did he? It’s not what we want to see when we come into an India series and the (five) Test matches.”

However, Labuschagne can take encouragement from his Test record at Optus Stadium in Perth, where he has 519 runs at an average of 103.80. Labuschagne will now turn his attention to the first Test while he, Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Smith will all sit out Sunday’s decider in Perth, in a huge boost to Pakistan’s hopes of clinching the three-match ODI series to achieve.

Cummins’ men were fortunate that Zampa’s wicket spared them the ignominy of becoming the first Australian team to lose a white-ball match at home by 10 wickets. But the Australian captain made no bones about it when describing how bad the loss was. “It wasn’t one of our best days,” Cummins said before adding: “We’ve been pretty good lately, but today was unfortunately one of our worst days.”

with AAP