Mickey Arthur: “Groom them, give them time and allow them opportunities to bat with experienced players and they will come through”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Pakistan team director Mickey Arthur is confident that the batting trio of Abdullah Shafique, Saim Ayub and Mohammad Haris have a future in the national team.
Shafique is already a first-choice opener in Test cricket and is starting to be utilised in ODIs as well as he has replaced Fakhar Zaman at the top of the order in the ongoing 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup.
Ayub, a power-hitting opener, has represented Pakistan in eight T20Is to date and scored 123 runs at an average of 17.57.
He recently dominated in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), where he was the second-highest run-scorer with 478 runs in 13 matches for the Guyana Amazon Warriors, which included four fifties, at an average of 43.45 and a strike-rate of 142.26.
As for Haris, who is another big-hitting batsman, he is seen as one of the top talents in the country and has featured in six ODIs and nine T20Is to date.
With Shafique, Ayub and Haris being 23, 21 and 22 years old respectively, Arthur wants to give them more opportunities to prove their worth in the future.
“Groom them, give them time and allow them opportunities to bat with experienced players and they will come through!” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Shafique is the only one of the three who is playing in the World Cup, where he has amassed 332 runs in six matches, which includes a century and three fifties, at an average of 55.33.
Pakistan won their first two matches against the Netherlands and Sri Lanka before falling to India, Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa.
With their World Cup campaign in tatters, the men in green picked up a big seven-wicket win against Bangladesh in Kolkata.
Pakistan still have a chance of making it to the World Cup semi-finals and will look to claim another victory when they go up against New Zealand on November 4 in Bengaluru.
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