Pakistan’s skipper Babar Azam was unable to conceal his displeasure with his team’s subpar fielding effort during the humbling loss to Afghanistan. The Men in Green is on the verge of elimination with the shocking loss against Afghanistan and they must win all four of their remaining games to see if they can make it to the final four.
After losing their previous two games, Pakistan was in desperate need of a victory as they faced Afghanistan but failed to live up to the expectations in the match, and Pakistan’s failure was largely caused by their below-par fielding. Pakistan has never been very good at fielding, and against Afghanistan, its players made a lot of expensive errors.
Addressing the media in the post-match press conference, Babar Azam tore down his teammates’ attitude on the field against Afghanistan. He acknowledged that they were lagging behind other teams in the world in terms of their ability to field well and expressed optimism that the team would perform well in the remaining matches of the major competition.
“Whenever you do fielding, it is only with attitude. And I don’t see any attitude from the team. You need to put in extra effort and be fit, You should focus on the ball, not on other thoughts, and when the ball comes, as a fielder, you have to be proactive. So, I think we are lagging a little bit as a fielding unit.”
“We will have to go with a different plan, a different mindset, we will try to bring a positive vibe to the team, I hope we learn from this loss (against Afghanistan). It will hurt us a lot. We will try to talk about positive things. But, we will also talk about the things we did not do well. How we will do it in the future. Because every match is with a different team,” Babar Azam said.
Pakistan failed to impress in Chennai, falling to Afghanistan by eight wickets. They scored 282/7 runs when they batted first. With 74 runs, Pakistani captain Babar Azam scored the most runs in the 92-deliver innings but could not get going into the end overs of the innings falling out young Noor Ahmad.
I Don’t Think We Have Anything To Lose – Babar Azam
Babar Azam ruined the absence of young Naseem Shah in the World Cup squad and admitted that the team was unable to click together as a unit despite them being one of the best bowling lineups in the World and wanting to give it their all to win the remaining games in the World Cup.
“We are missing Naseem a lot. But apart from that, our bowling lineup is one of the best. But, I think we are not able to click. In bowling, we started badly, but we finished up well. But I don’t think we have anything to lose. Every team is a new match, and we try to give our best,” Babar Azam added.
Pakistan continues to produce some of the finest fast-bowling talents. The Men in Green played an important role in the team’s progress in the white-ball format of the game but the Pakistan pacers Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf, and Hasan Ali have failed to live up to their expectations in the tournament so far.