After the defeat, Pakistan fell to sixth place on the WTC leader board. With three games remaining—one against England and two against New Zealand—Babar Azam’s team is aware that they must not only win all three but also hope for positive outcomes.

Pakistan is in a very bad spot. Yes, the chances of Babar Azam’s team reaching the World Test Championship final are now in jeopardy.

Pakistan was in charge of their fortunes just over a week ago.

The Asian giants had a good chance of securing one of the two spots that were available for the WTC final because they had five home Test matches coming up against tough opponents like England and New Zealand. Pakistan have not only conceded a home series, but they have also ensured that their fate is no longer in their own hands after narrowly losing the Multan Test against England and losing the first Test at Rawalpindi.

After the defeat, Pakistan fell to sixth place on the WTC leaderboard. With three games remaining—one against England and two against New Zealand—Babar Azam’s team is aware that they must not only win all three but also hope for positive outcomes.

Even though Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, and Rohit Sharma were not in the team for the first Test, one of those scenarios would be for India to lose both of their Test matches against Bangladesh, which appears to be a little difficult.

India can now reach the final even if they lose one of their four Test matches against Australia at home due to the outcome in Multan. However, Rohit Sharma’s team must first defeat Bangladesh in the two upcoming matches before hosting the Baggygreens in February in order to maintain that hope.

The series between Australia and South Africa will be another important one in all of this. India would like the Proteas to lose to the Aussies at home, which would increase their chances of leapfrogging them to second place.

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In the next two months, there will be a lot of different combinations and permutations, which will make Test cricket even more interesting for the purists.