Appointed as Misbah-ul-Haq’s replacement as captain in the aftermath of the 2015 World Cup disaster, Azhar Ali’s captaincy failed to inspire the Pakistan team to any greatness.
India started their campaign with a massive 124-run win against Pakistan at Edgbaston, Birmingham on Sunday. For all the build-up to the mega-clash, in the end, it was a complete mismatch between the two teams, as the Men in Blue asserted their dominance from the very beginning in the rain-interrupted game.
Captain Virat Kohli was delighted with India’s “complete performance” but said there was still room for improvement, especially in the fielding department. Put into bat, India piled on runs with Rohit Sharma (91) and Kohli (81 not out) helping their team post 319/3 in 48 overs. Pakistan never looked comfortable in the chase and kept losing regular wickets to finally fall short of their revised target of 289 in 41 overs.
“We only have ourselves to blame and as a team, we have to collectively accept the responsibility and take the blame. We made some crucial mistakes and they were the turning points and proved to be pivotal in the outcome of the match against India,” Azhar explained.
It’s always who holds the nerve in matches that win but Pakistan did a lot of blunders.
“I don’t think we were under pressure or more nervous than we would be for any other international match. India versus Pakistan matches are always huge encounters and are decided more often than not in key moments and we were found wanting at the key moments,” he added.
Gone are those days when the same sided boasted of a tight pace attack and bowlers gave chills down the spine. Sadly, it wasn’t the case this time around for Pakistan. There were a lot of fielding errors too and later pay the price for it.
“I thought we had India in check when they were batting for large parts of their innings and although they weren’t losing wickets, they were not scoring at a huge rate. However, the dropped catches of Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh seemed to be the turning point. If we had taken those two catches it could have been an altogether different match and India would not have found it easy to reach such a large total. If we had taken the catches of Kohli and Yuvraj, then who knows there may have been a different outcome to the match,” Azhar reasons.
Yuvraj Singh was given the Man of the Match award for his whirlwind innings of 53 off 32 balls. Azhar too praised Virat-Yuvraj duo for such an innings.
“Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh are world-class and proven performers. If you give players of that calibre lives by dropping catches off them then they will make you pay for your mistakes. We should have capitalised on those opportunities, but we didn’t and they made us pay for those errors.” he added.
For Azhar Ali, his team needs to move on from the embarrassment of the defeat against India and look forward,
“We have two matches left at the Champions Trophy, they are must-win games and we owe it to ourselves and the fans to up our game and perform better than we did against India”, he concluded.