Pakistan head coach Mickey Arthur has said his team will target India’s largely untested middle-order in the upcoming Champions Trophy final.
India’s top three- Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have looked in supreme form, rarely leaving anything to do for the middle-order batsmen.The trio is in the top 5 of the highest run-getters in the tournament with Dhawan (317 runs) leading the list followed by Rohit (304) at number two and Kohli (253) at number 5. Consequently, the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Kedar Jadhav, MS Dhoni and Hardik Pandya have rarely got a chance to bat and have managed to score a combined total of just 200 runs from seven innings compared to the 874 runs scored by the top three.
And with the top-three looking in such strong form, Arthur is planning to capitalise on the untested middle-order. For that, the Men in Green will have to get rid of Dhawan, Rohit and Kohli and Arthur said his team has no other option but to attack right from the word go.
“We have to (attack), we’ve got no option,” Arthur told cricket.com.au. “We’ve got to try and make that new ball really work for us. We’ve got to try and get into them. That middle order hasn’t had massive hits, they haven’t batted much under pressure of late. So we’ve got to try and put them under extreme pressure particularly by knocking their top order over. If we can do that, we’ve got a real chance of getting to their underbelly.”
Since being taken to cleaners by India in the opening game, the Pakistani bowlers have looked in great form and have managed to restrict oppositions to low totals. They have restricted each of South Africa, Sri Lanka and England to totals under 240. And the reason behind that is their disciplined bowling during the second powerplay.
With the absence of swing making it tough for the bowlers to get early breakthroughs, Pakistan has devised a new method of pressuring the opposition. The Pakistani bowlers have kept the opposition under check in the second powerplay and it has done wonders for them.
“Tactically we’d always spoken about our guys wanting to express themselves with the ball and wanting to attack,” Arthur said. “(The second Power Play) historically has been a bit of a dead period where you’re just trying to squeeze and contain the opposition. But what happens is you just allow the opposition to play, they keep so many wickets in hand that scores are getting too big at the back end.
“So we decided that we really wanted to attack those overs. That for us was key and we gave our bowlers the freedom to do that. We’ve got the ball to reverse swing, which is good for us because that’s a massive weapon,” he added.
Arthur also lauded skipper Sarfraz Ahmed’s positive and attacking approach.
“Our execution has been great and we’ve attacked. The captain has kept slips and put catchers in attacking positions and it’s worked for us. He’s very positive. He’s an aggressive captain and he wants to take wickets. That’s how we want to play and I think that’s how you have to play one-day cricket now. He encapsulates all that,” said the former South Africa and Australia coach.