Re: PAKISTAN vs INDIA: Dream T20 WC FINAL
First and foremost,** Congratulations to India and the Indian guppies here**. On the day that mattered, your team played better.
As I had said in my first post in this thread, it all comes down to nerves, and in their last three matches, India has shown that they can stay composed until the very last ball… unfortunately, this isn’t Pakistan’s forte.
Overall, no complaints from this Pakistan team though. They’ve done us proud by making it to the finals and beating many formidable opponents during the tournament.
No complaints from Misbah either… the guy helped save some face in the end. He’s just not a finisher – it’s at times like these that I miss Inzi… he used to play with the tail enders and take us home.
Shoaib’s own leadership style is very clinical like his batting… I just found that zeal of the final… that rage... missing today while we were fielding first. Why did we let India take all those singles??… I’d much rather have brought in the field and applied more pressure on the batsmen.
If there’s anyone I thought who should be blamed for today’s loss… it has to be Younis Khan and Kamran Akmal… they gave away their wickets. I mean why would you play a stupid aerial shot when it’s not your batting style? Just keep your strike rate above a 100% is all that’s asked of you in this format of the game. Akmal has just been way out of form and needs to work on his technique all over again.
As for the other players: - Hafeez has been pretty decent throughout the tournament with both the ball and the bat, so no complaints there ; - Afridi has contributed with the ball and in the field… we can’t and SHOULDN’T expect him to fire all the time ; - for Malik, it just wasn’t his day today, but he did his part in getting us to the final – he’s also a thinking captain… he just needs a little more aggression in the field.
That’s about all I have to say – congrats again India – well done Pakistan.
I really think we should look to try other keepers.
Sarfraz Ahmed of the U19 (U21?) squad looks an increasingly promising prospect.