Imran Khan hopes Pakistan won’t self destruct after New Zealand loss in ICC World Cup

[sonicboom]

Imran Khan hopes Pakistan won’t self destruct after New Zealand loss in ICC World Cup 2011

Former Pakistani captain Imran Khan, who led the country’s victorious campaign in the ICC World Cup 1992, fears that Pakistan’s morale-dampening defeat at the hands of New Zealand might lead the Men in Green to self destruct. He fears the team might crumble in the ongoing ICC World Cup 2011. Pakistan lost the match by 110 runs on 8th March.

Talking about the match, Khan said, “I just hope that they don’t press the panic button. If they panic, they will destruct and their World Cup campaign will be in tatters. You could see the players were nervous and tense. They need to recover quickly.”

Pakistan’s veteran all-rounder believed that a defeat just before the knockout stage would serve Pakistan best and the team needed to learn from the loss and figure out a way to counter their weaknesses in the rest of the tournament. The veteran insisted that the team management must rethink their strategies and the roles of the players should be redefined.

Khan was critical of Pakistan’s batting order and believed that experienced players such as Younus Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq should bat higher in the order because that would the team in a big way. He also suggested sending all-rounder Abdul Razzaq up the order as he felt that a match winner like Razzaq was being totally wasted at number eight.

Khan insisted that when Razzaq came to bat against New Zealand, the match had already been lost and there was nothing the all-rounder could do at the time. He reiterated that had Razzaq come earlier even before Shahid Afridi, Pakistan might have come closer to the target.

Imran Khan insisted that all was not lost yet for Pakistan and due to the format of the tournament Pakistan still had managed to reach the quarterfinal stage. Now, according to Khan, it was time for the national team to focus on improving their performance in the matches to come.

Imran insisted that Pakistan should play with five specialist bowlers as bowling had always been Pakistan’s strength and was only logical to go with your strength in a global event such as the World Cup.

Asked if wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal who dropped Ross Taylor twice should be scrapped from the squad, Imran said, “There is no other choice right now so the management must persist with Kamran, make him train hard and shore up his confidence. Any more experiments will only trigger more trouble.”

Akmal missed a few stumpings and dropped catches during the game which cost Pakistan the match. Ross Taylor had just arrived at the pitch when he was dropped twice in the same over of Shoaib Akhtar by Akmal. The Kiwi batsman went on to make 131 runs off 124 balls. It was Taylor’s magnificent innings that helped his team post a total of 302 runs on the board.

Imran Khan hopes Pakistan won