Pakistani Bowling Attack or just a Liability?

 Most of the Pakistani cricket fans have always believed that the Pakistani bowling unit is head and shoulder above its batting unit. But the  second ODI in the recent Sri Lankas series might be the card that changes the game or in this case minds of thousands of people who live, eat and sleep cricket, and have stood by their extremely unpredictable team through some very embarrassing performances on international grounds.

In the last two T20 games and the two ODI, the supposedly not so impressive  batting lineup has churned out more than expected numbers. The inclusion of new blood Sharjeel and Sohaib was a brilliant idea as they are contributing along with Shehzad, Hafeez, Misbah. Even Afridi is on fire, we finally got to see some long awaited action from him.

Bowling on the other side lacked the zest it has shown in the past. Giving up record 211 runs in the second T20 didn't help, nor did giving up back to back 280+ runs in ODI bodes well for a team that pride themselves on bowling . The experiment with Usman Sherwani was a disaster and along with Bhatti, who was a revelation against South Africa took a step back, but that was expected from the first year player.  Junaid has been average at best so far but he has taken the most wickets in the series, that leaves us with Sohail Tanvir :) He is the de fecto spearhead of this bowling attack with Mohammad Irfan being out with injury.  The only thing that can be said about his bowling is that it is inconsistent at best.  In the past he used to go for runs but at the end of day there were some crooked numbers in the wicket columns but even that column has been dry but he's not alone.  The spinners so far haven't had any consistent success against the Sri Lankan's either.  The strike rate is down and the economy rate is up and that's true with Hafeez, Afridi and Ajmal.  

Most of the people are blaming Tanvir for the ugly loss today but the game of cricket is a team game and we can't make one player the escape goat when none of the players performed like they should have.

So this raises a question. Did we put up our bowling attack on a pedestal and thought very high of it or we are just missing Irfan or Gul from the bowling attack?