Re: Umar Akmal’s Batting Position
The thing about Hafeez is that he don’t have the technique and mental toughness to survive (consistently) against Tier one teams (in my opinion, AUS, SA/ENG) in tough situations and good bowling attack, He looks as good as anyone against BD,SL,Zim, Eng and perhaps even NZ but even against these teams he needs to have non challenging batting conditions to do well. Take this series for example, he is first time up against a challenging bowler in Finn and he seems totally out of sorts, where as he scored runs after runs against NZ,SL,ZIM,BD.
Thats my opinion and you could have a different opinion, I would personally take a young opening batsman and groom him so that he can take on all international sides and not just SL,BD,Zim,NZ and india. and we do have some good young batsman that are not given constant chances in Sharjeel Khan, Awais zia (he seems very T20 specialist, but so did anwar for first 3 years on his career), azeem ghuman, Nasir Jamshed, Umar Amin, ahmed Shahzad and that guy Usman (cant remember his last name, he was taken to WI last year). But Pak cricket administrations either dont pick these guys regularly enough, and even when they do, the men in-charge on tour like captain and coach dont provide them with regular opportunities.