The last time Pakistan won a Test series, away or home, was in October 2024, when they defeated England 2-1. Since then, they have played six series and endured a clean sweep in as many as three. These results have brought them on track to finish at the bottom of the World Test Championship (WTC) table for the second cycle running.
Have Pakistan improved in white-ball formats?
Across formats this year, they have won only 12 out of their 25 fixtures. Eleven of those wins came in white-ball cricket, including a T20I and ODI series win over Australia. That is why their white-ball head coach, Mike Hesson, believes the team’s struggles aren’t as deep-rooted or as intense in limited-overs as in red-ball.
“Let me just stop you there, because there are a lot of things. Obviously, the Test team is struggling. We’re all well aware that the Test team is struggling. From a T20 perspective, the performance of the T20 side in the last 15 months has been around the third or fourth-best team in the world in terms of win percentage.”
Despite what the number shows at a glance, the claim invites plenty of debate. The wins that Pakistan have gathered, in T20Is particularly, include a good chunk of games against lower-ranked teams. If these games are filtered to include only full-member nations, Pakistan’s win percentage in T20Is since the start of 2025 drops to 57.89%.
India is a benchmark
Despite that, Pakistan’s T20I team has, by far, recorded the best results of the three formats. They have only lost three T20I games in 2026, one each against Sri Lanka, India, and England. But more than match results, two things have mattered for the fans. Number one, how they have fared in multi-national tournaments, which does not work in Pakistan’s favour. And number two, how they have held up against India; on this front, too, Pakistan haven’t had anything to boast about lately.
Pakistan last won a game against India in 2022, since when they have been on the receiving end of six back-to-back defeats. Hesson reckons winning against India is a benchmark for Pakistan fans, which in itself is a standard difficult enough.
“We have lost to India on multiple occasions, and that is the benchmark for all Pakistani cricket fans. We understand that. But to suggest that the T20 side is at a low, when I came in, we were number eight in the world in T20 cricket. We’re now number five in the world, and we’ve gone up 30 points over 15 months. So we’ve only done that by winning series, not just in Pakistan, but series in Dubai, series in America, whatever. So we’ve won a lot of series over the last 15 months in T20 cricket.”
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