Waqar Younis: “We have match-winners, we have individuals that can win you matches single-handedly, including Babar himself [and] Shaheen”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Waqar Younis, the former bowling coach, has deemed Pakistan captain Babar Azam and left-arm seamer Shaheen Shah Afridi as “match-winners.”
Both players have regularly produced performances that have led the men in green to victory.
With the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup in India fast approaching, Waqar acknowledged that Pakistan will need Azam and Afridi to be firing on all cylinders if they want to progress to the latter stages of the tournament.
“We have match-winners, we have individuals that can win you matches single-handedly, including Babar himself [and] Shaheen,” he told Cricket Pakistan.
Pakistan recently beat Sri Lanka 2-0 in a Test series and Afghanistan 3-0 in an ODI series.
Most recently, they featured in the Asia Cup, where Azam scored 207 runs in five matches, which included a top score of 151, at an average of 51.75.
Afridi, meanwhile, took 10 wickets in five games at an average of 23.50.
Pakistan began their campaign with a 238-run win over Nepal before sharing one point apiece with India as their match was abandoned due to rain.
Even though this happened, the men in green made it to the Super Four stage and defeated Bangladesh by seven wickets.
However, everything started to go wrong from this point as India crushed them by 228 runs.
Pakistan still had a chance to reach the Asia Cup final when they faced Sri Lanka on September 14 in Colombo, but they ended up losing by two wickets via the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method (DLS) method.
The men in green will now be in action in the World Cup, which gets underway on October 5.
Their first game will be against the Netherlands on October 6 in Hyderabad.
Pakistan Squad for 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup: Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Abdullah Shafique, Babar Azam (capt), Mohammad Rizwan, Saud Shakeel, Iftikhar Ahmed, Salman Ali Agha, Shadab Khan, Usama Mir, Mohammad Nawaz, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf, Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Hasan Ali