Pakistan captain Babar Azam has blamed batting inconsistency as the main reason for the ODI team’s poor performance and said that the habit of losing wickets in the cluster is something he would like to change quickly.
Pakistan recently trounced the West Indies team that toured under the leadership of Nicholas Pooran 3-0 here. They have lost just one 50-over game this calendar year as they look to continue their recent good run in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Super League.
But Babar Azam, the No 1 batsman in the ICC’s ODI and T20I rankings, still believes that a lot of work needs to be done to ensure automatic qualification for next year’s World Cup. India subsequent years.
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“We still need to improve in some areas,” Babar was quoted as saying by the ICC. The series win against West Indies helped Pakistan take the No. 4 ICC ODI ranking slot and push India to the fifth spot.
“We still lose wickets in the middle of the cluster which puts us on the backfoot. Here the players need better concentration; This is the working area. The fielding has improved, but our body language is bad even when a good partnership develops, and that’s another thing we can try and improve.”
Pakistan’s recent good performances have a lot to do with Babar’s own form with the bat, the number 1 ranked ODI batsman in the world recently becoming the second player to score three consecutive ODI hundreds on two separate occasions.
But Babar knows that Pakistan needs a whole lot of contribution for it to thrive and the right-hander was excited by the performances of some of his teammates during the series against West Indies.
Opener Imam-ul-Haq hit three consecutive half-centuries and was awarded the Player of the Series award, while Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz jointly took seven wickets each to take the leading wicket.
Babar was also impressed with Khushdil Shah’s powerful hitting as the 27-year-old continues to make a name for himself in the final overs of an innings.
Babar said, “Bench strength always gives you lift.”
“It’s good to know that you have players on the bench that are ready to use. We had Iftikhar (Ahmed), Abdullah Shafiq and (Shahnawaz) Dahani on the bench. We tried a different bowling combination and He did a great job. It’s very satisfying to see him as a captain.”
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