Pakistan didn’t have an auspicious start to the ICC Cricket World Cup warm-up matches as the Men in Green were defeated by New Zealand on Friday.
Although it was a warm-up game, the Pakistan Team were the favourites to win the contest given that they batted well posting a total of 345/5 in 50 overs. Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Saud Shakeel flourished with the bat for Pakistan but the bowlers had a disappointing run against the Blackcaps.
Mohammad Rizwan got a century scoring 103 while Babar and Shakeel scored 80 and 75 respectively. In the bowling department, every bowler for Pakistan leaked runs and as a result New Zealand comfortably chased the target in the 44th over.
Haris Rauf bowled just four overs and gave 36 runs without taking a wicket while Hasan Ali who is back in the ODI team after a year leaked runs with an economy of 8.6.
Former Pakistani pacer Wahab Riaz revealed the reason for Pakistan’s poor start in India, he believes that players lack the experience of playing in Indian conditions and it will take a game or few to get them rolling in these conditions.
Among the current Pakistani team with 15 players and three travelling reserves, only two players have previously travelled to India. Mohammad Nawaz travelled with the team during the 2016 ICC T20 World Cup and Salman Ali Agha played one T20 game for the Lahore Lions against the Dolphins during the Champions League T20.
Wahab Riaz Feels The Inexperience Will Spur Pakistan To Perform
“Playing in India is something else. Almost all the members of the current team including Babar have not played in India so the pressure will be there, especially with such a big crowd in attendance. But overall the Pakistan team is known to perform better whenever it is under pressure. I believe they will come out with a good performance, The World Cup is a different ball game and one cannot predict Pakistan’s show in it on the basis of their not-so-commendable performance in the Asia Cup. They have a balanced squad and can go the distance if they perform to their potential,” said Wahab Riaz.
The Men in Green will start their World Cup campaign against the Netherlands on 6th October in Hyderabad. They have one more warm-up game against Australia before they kick off their campaign. Hopefully, they will take lessons from the defeat against New Zealand and will perform better with time as they get familiar with the Indian conditions.
The post Pakistan Can Win The World Cup: Wahab Riaz Makes A Bizarre Claim Just Day After Pakistan’s Shambolic Loss To New Zealand appeared first on CricketAddictor.
from CricketAddictor https://ift.tt/wUTnqZB
0 Comments