Image courtesy of: Zimbio

Pakistan left-arm seamer Wahab Riaz has admitted that his side will have to be at the “very top of our game” if they want to beat England in their World Cup clash on Monday.

Pakistan began their World Cup campaign in disappointing fashion as they were skittled out for a dismal score of 105 en route to a seven-wicket loss to the West Indies on Friday.

Fakhar Zaman and Babar Azam were the top scorers as they both made 22 runs, while Wahab Riaz chipped in with a quickfire 18 at the end.

Mohammad Hafeez was the only other batsman to reach double figures as he made 16.

The men in green will face England next, and will no doubt be looking for revenge as they were beaten 4-0 in their five-match ODI series against the World Cup hosts.

With Pakistan having lost their last 11 ODIs, which is their longest losing streak in the format, Wahab pointed out that his side are in desperate need of a win.

He added that beating England will also inject some much-needed confidence into the side.

“We lost that series 4-0 but there wasn’t much between the runs we scored, I think the only difference was the fielding, we dropped too many catches at crucial moments,” he was quoted as saying by the Pakistan Cricket Board’s website.

“We’ve worked a lot on that because we need all departments on form to beat England.

“We have to be on the very top of our game to beat England, we have to have spot on execution of our plans.

“It was disappointing to lose to the West Indies but this is just the start, we will comeback from this. We just need to get into our rhythm. We will have to look at this as a practice match now.

“I think we can take some positives from the way we bowled. We just need to work on our self-confidence and self-belief. We are only looking for positives, we will come back from this.

“It’s not a mental issue. We have been losing in the past, we need to find a way to get out of this pattern. We’ve been playing some good cricket in the last few months but we need to click at the right time. We know where we are making the mistakes and a win against England would change everything.”

[interaction id=”5c1d9088e5245c5b0b264d12″]