The Pakistan team had left the stadium without doing their mixed-zone formalities, which was announced by the ICC media manager.
Pakistan threw it all away despite having already sealed the victory. In this regard, Mohammed Rizwan tried a weird shot across the line that he missed against Jasprit Bumrah and lost his wicket to invite a capitulation.
“Some of these guys are internationals and they know that when you’re not playing your best, there’s going to be pressure.”
“It’s been a lot of T20 cricket around the world for a lot of these guys for many years now, so it’s pretty much up to them how they want to take their games forward,” said Pakistan head coach Gary Kirsten in a rather downcast tone after “controlling 35 of the 40-over contest”.
As such, Pakistan will have everything to lose in their penultimate group league encounter against Canada on Tuesday. They need Pakistan to thrash both Canada and Ireland with considerable margins and USA to be hammered by India and Ireland if they are to make it out of Group A into ‘Super 8’.
After losing to India, it seemed as if there was some disagreement between coach and captain over how they went about chasing. While things went according plan during first fifteen overs according Kirsten, Babar stated that they were outplayed within first six overs while chasing at Dubai International Stadium.
“We just wanted them [to] look for odd boundary every over; play loose stuffs well enough through innings.” And I think we did that exceptionally well for 15 overs,” said Kirsten.
Compare this with what Babar said: “We were off target in those initial six overs; perhaps we should have looked for 40-45 runs only because we did not capitalize properly. You do not expect much from tail-enders.”
There appears a clear gap in communication.
This somewhat sums up Pakistan cricket over the last few years where they are not clear about the direction. After the ODI World Cup, Babar was stripped of captaincy only to be reappointed with a change in PCB’s regime. And now they are on course for another early exit from an ICC event as there has been no continuity.
However, Kirsten will not give up that easily.
“Number one, we are still alive and kicking. Even this game our bowlers did really well.” However, there is a problem on how we can put our innings together and structure it because we are losing too many wickets at once; if you look at batting unit as a whole, that is never going to work out. The coach also added that his players should take blame whenever they got chances,” he said.
Kirtsen, who oversaw India’s 2011 World Cup triumph, also mentioned something about Pakistan cricket probably needing a systemic change.
For me, the most important thing as an international player is to grow and develop as a player. I have to know what it takes for international competitions. The game changes almost every year. So, if you are not up to it and not bettering yourself, somewhere you will be caught out,” Kirsten said.
Pakistan cricket authorities should listen to his suggestions and make the required amends for this supremely talented side that has lost its mojo.
