Shoaib Malik: “Travelling is an excuse. The whole world is travelling. Look at India’s calendar. Their pacers didn’t lose pace and swing. It is the professionalism, which is missing in our team”
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Veteran all-rounder Shoaib Malik has put the entire Pakistan team on blast for making excuses about why their 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup campaign went so horribly wrong.
He noted that too many excuses are being made, such as the amount of travelling the team had to do.
Malik pointed out that every other team had to travel too and it didn’t affect them in the same way.
On top of that, the 41-year-old from Sialkot pointed out that the men in green lack any professionalism, which is another reason why they fared so poorly in the World Cup.
“Travelling is an excuse. The whole world is travelling. Look at India’s calendar. Their pacers didn’t lose pace and swing. It is the professionalism, which is missing in our team,” Malik was quoted as saying by Geo Super.
“You ask half of them and they would not know how to recover. In the recent past, we didn’t have any ingredients, which can help you to get rid of cramps. We saw that in the case of Maxwell, they gave him some gels and he played with severe cramps. It is all excuses. Travelling doesn’t matter.”
Pakistan won their first two games against the Netherlands and Sri Lanka before losing four straight to India, Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa.
Despite fighting back to take down Bangladesh and New Zealand, it was not enough to earn them a spot in the semi-finals.
The men in green concluded their campaign on a low as England clobbered them by 93 runs.
Pakistan’s next assignment will be a three-match Test series against Australia, which gets underway on December 14 in Perth.
Pakistan Squad for Australia Test Series: Shan Masood (captain), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi
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