Mohammad Hafeez: “The captain and team management took the best decision they could and we as a team did not perform well”

Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo

Pakistan all-rounder Mohammad Hafeez firmly believes it was the right decision to bowl first in their World Cup clash against India last Sunday.

Pakistan were criticised for opting to bowl first as they don’t have a good history chasing big totals.

That was exactly what occurred in their match against their arch-rivals as India posted a score of 336/5 behind opener Rohit Sharma’s 140 and captain Virat Kohli’s 77.

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

As a result, they went on to lose to India 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.

To make matters worse, Pakistan have now only won one of the five World Cup games they have played.

However, while most of the blame regarding the toss has been placed on captain Sarfraz Ahmed, Hafeez made it clear that it was a “team decision”.

“First of all it was a team decision – talking about it after the match is easy,” he was quoted as saying by PakPassion. “As a player, I own the decision of team management and they took the right decision based upon conditions

“We didn’t bowl well and capitalize on that decision, we didn’t bowl well and put them under pressure.

“In my view, toss should not be discussed so much, no one makes decisions after reading Tweets. No one asks for advice and then changes their point of view like that.

“The captain and team management took the best decision they could and we as a team did not perform well.”

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

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