Shoaib Akhtar: “What saddens me is when you don’t use your captaincy, cleverness, smartness and brain”

Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo

Legendary Pakistan pace bowler Shoaib Akhtar has once again criticised captain Sarfraz Ahmed for choosing to bowl first in his side’s World Cup clash against India last Sunday.

Just a couple days ago, Akhtar called Sarfraz “brainless” for opting to bowl first. On this occasion, he said that the Pakistan skipper doesn’t use his “captaincy, cleverness, smartness and brain”.

India scored 336/5 off their 50 overs behind opener Rohit Sharma’s 140 and captain Virat Kohli’s 77.

In response, Pakistan struggled to keep up with the run rate and lost wickets at key moments in the match.

As a result, they ended up losing the match by 89 runs via the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.

India’s victory extended their unbeaten streak against Pakistan as they have now won all seven of their meetings against their arch-rivals in the World Cup.

With their loss to India, Pakistan have now only won one of the five World Cup games they have played.

“India is a big team and it has played well and won – we should be congratulating India,” Akhtar was quoted as saying by PakPassion. “We won the Champions Trophy and gave them a drubbing and have won many ODIs against them, but it’s unfortunate that we cant win in the World Cup against them, it doesn’t mean Pakistan is a bad team.

“What saddens me is when you don’t use your captaincy, cleverness, smartness and brain.

“The problem was that against a very long Indian batting line-up if we don’t bat on a good wicket then we don’t put them under pressure and give them a chance to score big totals then they will do that and you cannot chase 300 plus.

“You do not have a history of chasing large totals. You knew that in [the] Champions Trophy we won the toss and batted first and so we should have done that this time also.

“If Pakistan had batted first, then even we would have made 300 and India would have come under pressure as this was a big game.”

Pakistan’s next World Cup match will be against South Africa at Lord’s on Sunday.

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