Arthur: Pakistan went off-plan against India
Coach rues batting failure and bowlers’ inability to strike back
Pakistan will have to fight hard to recover from the impact of the heavy defeat to arch-rivals India on Wednesday in the Unimoni Asia Cup here. And the person who will have to lift the spirits of the team is coach Mickey Arthur.
Speaking to Gulf News about why after their batting faltered, even the Pakistan bowlers were not able to fight back, Arthur said: “We went away from our plans too quickly. On a wicket like that you needed to strike early if you were going to defend, but we didn’t do that. We need to sit down and talk about it.”
Arthur then explained what went wrong with the batting, too. “Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah bowled well [for India] and assessed the conditions well,” said Arthur.
“We were soft at the top of the order, we thought we could have defended 250-260, but we didn’t get there. I thought Babar (Azam) and (Shoaib) Malek batted well, but after that we didn’t bat well. There was some panic when we didn’t strike early and then our bowlers went away from the plan.”
Arthur considers it as a bad day for Pakistan. “It was a poor bad day. We were below par today which is very disappointing,” he said.
Arthur then went on to remind everyone of the team’s record in Dubai. “We have played some pretty good cricket here. This is the first time we have lost a one-day match here in 17 outings,” he said. “We are coming at the back of seven ODI wins albeit against different oppositions, though we didn’t play well tonight and there are no excuses.”
To a query on whether he was worried about skipper Sarfraz Ahmad’s poor form, Arthur said: “Certainly not a worry about his batting position at all. He is playing well. We sort of batted out of roles, which was disappointing. It’s not Imam’s [Ul Haq] role to run down the pitch to [Bhuvneshwar] Kumar in the third over. It’s not Sarfraz’s role to hit over the top and get caught. We have given [specific] roles to the batsmen. I just thought we were soft — 128 dot balls out of 258 faced not good enough.”
Arthur admitted that fast bowler Mohammad Amir’s lack of wickets was a worry. “Yes, that’s a concern,” he said. “I will be lying if I said it wasn’t. I had a good long chat with him and I think he bowled well tonight [on Wednesday]. I thought he hit the crease hard, he ran in well.” ■