Mohammad Yousuf: “It is a part of the game. Being in and out of form is just part of it. His drills and practices are phenomenal so he will definitely score in the next series”
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Legendary Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf has backed captain Babar Azam to “definitely score in the next series” following his disappointing performance in the Test series against Zimbabwe.
In the Test series against Zimbabwe, Azam mustered two runs at an average of one.
However, Yousuf insisted that all players go through ups and downs, and is confident that Azam will be back to his very best when Pakistan are next in action.
“Sometimes it happens in cricket. When you are playing cricket on a regular basis, you get some innings where you don’t score a lot of runs. This does not mean that there is a problem,” Yousuf, who is the batting coach at the National High Performance Centre (NHPC) in Lahore, told Cricket Pakistan.
“It is a part of the game. Being in and out of form is just part of it. His drills and practices are phenomenal so he will definitely score in the next series.”
Prior to the Zimbabwe Test series, Azam made scores of 103, 31 and 94 in the ODI series against South Africa, giving him a total of 228 runs at an average of 76.
As for the T20 series, he made 14 and 50 in the first two matches before hammering a career-best 122, which came off 59 balls and included 15 boundaries and four sixes, in the third T20 International.
In the fourth game, he was dismissed for 24 and thus finished with 210 runs in four matches at an average of 52.50 and a strike-rate of 143.83.
He amassed 95 runs in the three-match T20 series against Zimbabwe, which included a top score of 52, at an average of 31.66 and a strike-rate of 100.
During that series, he became the fastest batsman to score 2,000 runs in T20 Internationals.
Pakistan’s next series will be a limited overs tour of England, where they will play three ODIs and three T20 Internationals from July 8 to 20.
After that, they will tour the West Indies, where they will play five T20 Internationals and two Tests.
The T20 series will run from July 27 to August 3, while the Test series will get underway on August 12 and conclude on August 24.