Pakistan cricket captain Babur Azam “It’s easy to give advice on TV,” dismissing critics after the team’s poor performance in the ODI World Cup.
Pakistan will need to beat England by at least 287 runs on Saturday to replace New Zealand, who have a better run rate, to reach the semi-finals of the mega event.
In case of failure to achieve this difficult target, Babar, who has been captaining for three years, will face more questions.
However, 29-year-old Babar insists that he is not under pressure. “I didn’t perform the way I should have in the World Cup, that’s why people are saying I’m under pressure.”
“Everyone has their own perspective, their own way of seeing things,” he added. Everyone is saying different things that it should be like this, it should be like that.
‘If anyone wants to give me advice, everyone has my number. It’s easy to give advice on TV, if someone wants to give me advice, they can message me.’
Babar has scored 282 runs at an average of 40 in eight matches so far in the ongoing World Cup in India, including four half-centuries.
However, he lost four out of eight matches as captain, including a shock loss to Afghanistan.
Pakistan breathed life into the event when opener Fakhar Zaman played a smoky 81-ball 126 not out in reply to New Zealand’s 6-401 in a rain-hit match for Pakistan.
Babar is optimistic that they will beat England. “It’s not that we don’t have it in our mind, it is in our mind and we will try to do it.”
“We cannot go into the field and start blindly,” he added. We definitely want this target but with proper planning how to play the first 10 overs, then the next 20 overs and how to achieve the target.
“There are a lot of things like partnerships, which player has to stay on the pitch and how much. If pride If it settles down to 20 to 30 overs, we can get it. We can do it, we have planned it.’
Pakistan have never scored more than 361 runs against England. His biggest victory against England was 22 years ago by 108 runs.
1992 champions Pakistan started the World Cup with wins against Holland and Sri Lanka but then suffered back-to-back defeats to India and Australia.
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After losses to Afghanistan and the Proteas, victories against Bangladesh and New Zealand revived hopes of a semi-final berth.
Babar termed the defeat against South Africa in Chennai as a big setback and said that they should have won the Afghanistan match as well and because of these defeats they have reached this stage.
He further said, ‘My aim was to finish the match and win them with my performance. There were expectations of me and I admit I didn’t do what was expected of me.’
Despite a possible exit from the event on Saturday, Azam said Pakistan should not be underestimated.
Do you think we have lost every World Cup since 1999? Azam asked.
“If you look at the T20 World Cup, we were in the Asia Cup (2022 final), we played in the Australia (T20 World Cup 2022) final.
He said that it is not that we are not playing well in the World Cup, we are not able to finish well.
‘You can’t say we haven’t done well since 1999, we’ve dominated and we were number one.’
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2024-09-23 12:27:16
