Ul-Haq wants the entire team to step up and stop making the same mistakes over and over again
Pakistan ODI captain Misbah-ul-Haq has called on his lower order batsmen to step up during matches and add some runs towards the last few overs after the national team suffered yet another defeat at the hands of Australia, who won the three match ODI series 2-1.
Throughout the ODI series, Pakistan experimented with different lineups, but failed to really convince the fans and cricket pundits that they were a team on the rise.
“Our lower order is not contributing, had anyone scored 30-40 in the lower order we would have scored much more. We are losing matches because we are not scoring runs in the lower order and that is why we had Shahid [Afridi] and Kamran [Akmal],” ul-Haq said.
Akmal, who made his comeback into the Pakistan national team after a year, failed to make any real contributions with the bat, and the same can be said about Afridi, who has really struggled to score runs in the past couple of limited overs series.
Ul-Haq has confidence in his top order batsmen, but stated that they should do their best to play out all 50 overs in an ODI in order to ensure that a solid total is posted for opposing team to chase.
“We have experienced players in the lower order, the only need is to bat the full 50 overs, because if we score 230-240, our bowling is so good that we can defend that,” ul-Haq said.
After disappointing series against England, Sri Lanka and now Australia, ul-Haq is sick and tired of the national team making the same mistakes over and over again.
“We struggled in our batting against England and then in Sri Lanka, and that is why we played seven batsmen but we couldn’t score much, we were sure about the target today but we lost the way. We committed mistakes, mistakes we have been repeating in the last two or three series but we can’t win matches if we continue to do that,” ul-Haq added.
Ul-Haq credited Australia for their all-round team performance and they way they handled the Pakistan spin attack, which he believes was one of the major reasons why the Australians managed to secure the series win.
“We tried everything, kept attacking fields, but credit must be given to them, the way [George] Bailey and Glenn Maxwell batted, it showed maturity although they were playing [their] third or fourth match,” ul-Haq said.