Stand-in captain Shahid Afridi believes Pakistan’s abysmal performance in their 3-0 rout by Australia will hurt the team’s chances at next year’s World Cup.
Pakistan spurned a good chance of salvaging some pride in the third and final one-dayer on Sunday, losing by one run in the final over in Abu Dhabi.
Needing just two to win in the 50th and final over, Pakistan lost Sohail Tanvir (10) to off-spinner Glenn Maxwell’s second ball and then Mohammad Irfan (0) off the last.
Photo: AFP
Afridi said Pakistan cannot go into the World Cup in February and March in Australia and New Zealand with such performances.
“If we are not able to win on these pitches then we have to think we can’t go into the World Cup with these performances,” Afridi said.
Pakistan have now lost five straight one-dayers after losing the last two in a 2-1 defeat in Sri Lanka in August.
Afridi said the batsmen once again spoiled good work by the bowlers, who kept Australia down to 231-9 in 50 overs.
“If you look overall we have spoilt the good work of the bowlers,” Afridi said of the attack, with paceman Sohail Tanvir taking 3-40 and himself finishing with 2-44.
“On this pitch it looked as if they will get 280-plus. We managed to keep them down to 231, but from the Twenty20 game to the third one-dayer our problem has been a lack of partnerships. When we build a partnership our wickets start to fall,” said Afridi, who is Pakistan’s Twenty20 captain.
Pakistan lost the only Twenty20 which preceded the one-day series by five wickets in Dubai.
On Sunday, Pakistan were without regular one-day captain Misbah-ul-Haq, who opted to rest because of a poor run of scores.
“The Pakistan captaincy is not an easy job,” Afridi said when asked why Misbah stepped aside. “It was Misbah’s own decision to rest.”
When asked would he like to continue the one-day captaincy until the World Cup, Afridi said: “I think whoever is captain, Misbah or me, we should know about it. If I am to captain in the World Cup, then I should know about it.”
Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Shaharyar Khan said it will be up to Misbah to decide whether or not he wants to lead Pakistan at the World Cup, but that the board has already started considering other options.
Meanwhile, Australia returned to the top of the one-day international rankings following the series win, the International Cricket Council said yesterday.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier