Sarfraz Ahmed: “I have been continuously batting at No. 4 [as of late] and I would like to continue there”
Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed has expressed his desire to keep batting at No. 4 throughout the limited overs tour of Zimbabwe.
Sarfraz moved up to the position earlier this year after being convinced to do so by head coach Mickey Arthur.
Prior to that, he started his career batting at No. 8 and then hovered around the middle order before promoting himself further up the batting line-up.
During the recently concluded Twenty20 series against Scotland, Sarfraz was in red-hot form during the first Twenty20 International as he struck a career-best 89 not out.
With Sarfraz having enjoyed a lot of success batting at No. 4, he hopes to do the same during the Twenty20 tri-series against Zimbabwe and Australia, and during the five-match ODI series against Zimbabwe.
“I have been continuously batting at No. 4 [as of late] and I would like to continue there,” Sarfraz was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. “We are basically trying to build ahead of the World Cup. If you look at the ODI side, we haven’t made many changes. Fakhar Zaman, Shadab, Haris [Sohail] who is back in the side, Babar Azam at the top, [Mohammad] Hafeez and [Shoaib] Malik are around. So we are settling and it is good that the team is performing and we are going in the right direction with the right combination.”
Pakistan will go into the tri-series as the top-ranked Twenty20 team in the world, but Sarfraz insisted that this won’t put any added pressure on his side.
“We actually don’t really think about being No. 1 or ratings,” he said. “When we were not No. 1, we never thought about the rankings so all we have to do is to play naturally without getting into such details. I only urge the players to give their best and leave all other things aside.
“The boys are backing each other and this is something that’s quite evident in the field. Even if someone fields well in the covers or at the boundaries, or has taken a good catch, they all respond to it and back each other up.”