Grant Bradburn: “We have a team of champions, we don’t have a champion team as of yet. And that’s what we’re looking to build”
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Grant Bradburn, the new Pakistan head coach, said the men in green are not “a champion team as of yet”.
He noted that all the components are there but ultimately becoming the best side they can be will take some time.
Bradburn added that in order for Pakistan to compete for major trophies, such as the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup in India, every single player in the side has to lift their game to another level.
“We have a team of champions, we don’t have a champion team as of yet. And that’s what we’re looking to build,” he was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan. “We’ve allowed the realisation or the acceptance from our boys, that we’re not the team where they want to be as yet, if we want to contest and win the World Cup, we want to go to number one, every format of the game, our game is going to have to lift, our players are going to have to lift [themselves].
“As we have played over the last year, particularly in this [T20I] format, it’s got us to third in the world. It’s got us to two finals, so we are not where we want to be. And therefore, you know we are going to bring some subtle changes, some subtle demands.
“We’re going to support the players with clarity, but we’re also going to demand them to lift themselves and get better. If we bring the game that is been successful for us over the last two or three years, we will come second and we will go backwards. We have to understand what brand of the game we need to play in Asia Cup and World Cup. And we need to adapt to that very quickly.”
The Pakistan team is currently in Sri Lanka, where they are playing a two-match Test series, which will be held until July 28.
Pakistan Squad for Sri Lanka Test Series:Â Babar Azam (c), Mohammad Rizwan (vc & wk), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Muhammad Huraira, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Noman Ali, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Shan Masood