Pakistan’s head coach Mickey Arthur believes that Pakistan’s performance against South Africa on Sunday at Lord’s will keep some people mum, at least for a little while.
Speaking after Pakistan’s 49-run win over South Africa in the World Cup game, Arthur said that the team was hurt due to the events that happened in the last few days.
“I just think the guys were burnt out last week. The guys were incredibly hurt by media, public, social media… And hopefully, we got a proper reaction from them today that can just shut some people up for a little while,” Arthur said while talking about the abuse and criticism Pakistan team received in the last few days.
“Our guys need to be built up all the time. The minute they are bashed, like they have been the last week, our guys don’t respond to that in a very kind way and hopefully, we got a performance out today that vindicates the talent the boys have on the team,” he added.
The head coach of the Pakistan team expressed confidence that Pakistan can beat New Zealand at Birmingham on Wednesday adding that the boys will have to give their best.
“I know we can beat New Zealand. It’s amazing what a difference a week makes. Our boys got hurt this week, all of us were hurt, incredibly. Guys didn’t sleep much, but they came to the training every day and put the effort in, to try and turn it around and today we got some just reward,” he said.
“We are alive and kicking, without a doubt, and we play our best game, we beat anybody. Whether that’s New Zealand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, our remaining games, or England, we showed. We put our three disciplines together, we are as good as any team in this competition,” Arthur added.
He added that Pakistan is quite firm in the World Cup and winning the next three games will take the team through.
Arthur also rued that the washed-out game against Sri Lanka in Bristol broke the team’s momentum.
“We are banking on other teams doing us a favour, as well. It probably is — but we’ve got to win three games,” Arthur said about Pakistan’s chances in the world cup.
“I felt we had just got some momentum and we were rained out. After beating England, we were rained out and we didn’t play for nine days or eight days, which sort of just stopped momentum a little bit for us and we’ve had to find it again,” he said.
Arthur also suggested that people should not talk negatively about Pakistan team every time, especially on the day when they’ve won.
His comments came following a question by a Pakistani journalist who suggested that Haris Sohail looked exhausted towards the end of his innings.
“He got 80 from 59 balls today. Is that right, or did I miss something? I think (laughter) why — why are you always talking negatively about our players? Today, was one of the all-time brilliant innings’ that I’ve seen. Let’s just write something positive for a change please,” he said.
Talking about Malik’s omission, Arthur said that he thought the all-rounder’s experience would be helpful for Pakistan team but it didn’t pan out well.
“We went with Shoaib for three games. We gave him a good extended run. We thought Shoaib with his experience would end his ODI career in a very, very special way. It didn’t pan out for him, but he certainly tried. He’s put in tremendous amounts of work, and we banked on having some experience at six. But today we shuffled it around and I thought we got quite a nice balance,” he said.
