“We are lying to ourselves if we think we can win the World Cup while being ranked seventh and eighth in the world.”
That’s Aaqib Javed, Pakistan Cricket Board’s Director of High Performance, speaking on Tuesday, July 22, 2026. He’s the man responsible for building Pakistan’s white-ball pipeline for the next two years. And he just said, publicly and on the record, that his team has no business thinking about winning a World Cup right now.
It’s a remarkable thing to hear from someone in his position. It’s also, almost certainly, the right call.
What He Actually Said
Aaqib’s statement came during a media interaction in which he was asked about Pakistan’s realistic prospects for the 2027 ICC Men’s ODI World Cup, to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia.
His assessment was unambiguous. “We are lying to ourselves if we think we can win the World Cup while being ranked seventh and eighth in the world,” he said. “That cannot happen. Until we become one of the top four teams in the ICC rankings, we cannot consider ourselves capable of winning.”
He didn’t stop there. He said Pakistan’s immediate priority should be to secure automatic qualification for the 2027 World Cup and avoid any risk of dropping out of the top tier of ODI nations. Only after that baseline is secured, he argued, should the team focus on preparing for South African conditions.
There’s one factual wrinkle worth addressing directly: Pakistan’s current official ICC ODI ranking is fifth, not seventh or eighth as Aaqib stated. With a rating of 100, they sit behind India, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. The ranking gap he’s describing is real — being outside the top four is a meaningful distance from the tournament’s genuine contenders — but his specific numbers were slightly off. The broader point stands regardless of whether the exact ranking is fifth or seventh.
Key Pakistan ODI Rankings — July 22, 2026:
| Player | Category | Position | Rating Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Babar Azam | Batting | 6th | 689 |
| Salman Ali Agha | Batting | 16th | 630 |
| Mohammad Rizwan | Batting | 31st | 560 |
| Abrar Ahmed | Bowling | 2nd | — |
| Shaheen Shah Afridi | Bowling | 7th | 604 |
| Haris Rauf | Bowling | 20th | 556 |
For context: the ODI batting rankings are led by New Zealand’s Daryl Mitchell (802 points), with Shubman Gill second and Virat Kohli third. Pakistan’s highest-ranked batter, Babar Azam at sixth, sits 113 rating points behind the leader — a gap that reflects genuine form over time, not just one bad series.
Why He’s Right, Even If The Numbers Are Slightly Off
Pakistan’s ODI record over the past twelve months has been a series of genuinely impressive bilateral results alongside high-profile ICC tournament failures that don’t resolve easily.
In bilateral series, Aaqib’s tenure has produced real results. Pakistan beat England in a Test series. They won an ODI series in Australia for the first time in 22 years. They beat South Africa 3-0 in ODIs on South African soil — a result no visiting team had previously managed.
In ICC tournaments, the story has been different. Pakistan exited the Champions Trophy 2025 — which they hosted — in the group stage, losing to New Zealand and India in their first five days and two games. At the T20 World Cup 2026, held in India in March, they reached the Super 8s but were eliminated on net run rate despite winning their final match against Sri Lanka. A 61-run defeat to India in that Super 8 phase effectively ended their campaign before the late stages mattered.
That’s the gap Aaqib is acknowledging. Pakistan can beat the best teams in bilateral series. Pakistan cannot, as yet, consistently execute at ICC tournament level when every match has elimination stakes and opposition preparation is at its sharpest.
The Qualification Context That Makes His Warning Odd
There’s a separate detail in ProPakistani’s own reporting that deserves attention: Aaqib’s warning about missing automatic qualification doesn’t really apply under the current setup.
The qualification pathway for the 2027 ODI World Cup was recently restructured. Pakistan are among the twelve nations already confirmed for automatic direct qualification. There is no realistic scenario, given Pakistan’s current ICC standing and the qualification rules as they exist, where Pakistan miss the 2027 World Cup outright.
Aaqib may have been speaking more generally about the importance of maintaining ODI ranking position — finishing as a higher seed improves the group-stage draw, which matters enormously in a tournament held in South Africa where conditions will suit certain teams more than others. That’s a legitimate strategic concern even if the specific “risk of missing qualification” framing doesn’t entirely hold.
It’s also worth adding the 2027 format context that makes this clearer: the 2027 ODI World Cup expands to a 14-team field, and Pakistan’s current top-eight ICC ODI standing guarantees them direct entry under the revised qualification structure. The fear of missing the tournament entirely simply doesn’t apply. What does apply — and what Aaqib is most likely actually signalling — is that a lower seed going into South Africa means a harder group draw, potentially facing the top two or three teams in the world in the opening phase rather than meeting them only in the knockout rounds.
What He’s Actually Building Toward
Aaqib’s public pessimism about World Cup winning chances is, in context, less a prediction and more a management tool. The August four-team ODI tournament he announced earlier this month was explicitly designed to identify Pakistan’s white-ball core before the 2027 cycle truly begins. The stated objective from that announcement was to reach the top four in ODI rankings — which matches what he said Tuesday almost word for word.
The blunt public statement does something useful: it removes expectation management as a political problem. If Pakistan’s Director of High Performance has already publicly said the team cannot win a World Cup at their current ranking, then reaching the semi-finals or quarter-finals of the 2027 event can be framed as genuine progress rather than underperformance. It sets a floor rather than a ceiling.
That’s a reasonable way to manage a rebuild cycle — especially one that has to carry the weight of Pakistan’s recent ICC tournament history, which includes exits at the group stage of two consecutive events, while also producing genuinely impressive bilateral results that give Aaqib’s argument some credibility.
The Honest Assessment of Where Pakistan Actually Stands
Pakistan at fifth in ODI rankings, outside the top four, heading into a two-year build toward a World Cup in South African conditions — here’s the honest picture.
What’s working:
- Real bilateral series results in tough conditions, including Australia and South Africa
- An emerging generation in the white-ball setup, with players like Saim Ayub and Sahibzada Farhan now established in global rankings
- A clear leadership structure under Aaqib and a stated, measurable ranking target
What isn’t:
- No ICC knockout-stage wins in the last three major tournaments
- A net run rate problem in the T20 World Cup that exposed how far the team’s margin for error has shrunk at elite level
- South African conditions — bouncy, seaming, with genuine lateral movement — represent a specific challenge that Pakistan’s batting order has historically found difficult when pace bowling is accurate and full
Aaqib’s public acknowledgment that the team can’t win a World Cup at its current level isn’t defeatism. It’s the kind of honest baseline that a rebuild needs to start from — and given Pakistan’s record of cycling through optimism and disappointment at ICC events, starting from honesty might be the most valuable thing he’s said since taking the job.