Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Latest Photos
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Younis Khan and Umar Gul address the media |
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Shoaib Akhtar fields questions at a press conference |
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Shahid Afridi signs World Cup bat stickers at a promotional event |
United Pakistan seek World Cup glory
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Shahid Afridi addresses the media |
Shahid Afridi has laid down the markers for those who would underestimate Pakistan in this World Cup. They are, he said, the 'most dangerous side in the World Cup', and has pointed to the mix of youth and experience that has drawn parallels, however tenuous, with the side that won the tournament almost 20 years ago.
"We all know how important the competition is for my country," Afridi said in his first World Cup press conference in Mirpur. "This is a message for the other teams: No one can underestimate us. And when I said dangerous, [I meant] don't underestimate the Pakistan team. We are with a very good bunch of youngsters and experienced players. It is good to see Kamran Akmal back in the team, Misbah [ul-Haq] too is in good form and so is Younis [Khan]. We also have two genuine spinners and a fast bowler like Shoaib Akhtar."
While Imran Khan did not have to rebuild a side ravaged by controversy, there are a few similarities between this Afridi-led team and the triumphant side of 1992. Imran was missing a devastating opening bowler in an injured Waqar Younis, and his team also had a mix of young talent and experience.
Afridi, though lacking Imran's tactical nous, is capable of firing up his side and after their twin success in New Zealand last month (1-0 in Tests and 3-2 in ODIs); they are high on confidence and team spirit. "Pitches around the world are very similar. I think as we performed well in New Zealand conditions, we'll feel more confident on Asian tracks.
"We've gone through a very tough situation. As a captain I'm very happy because we were trying to rebuild the team and boost its morale. The team has gelled. We keep these (controversial) issues out of the team and we are focused on the cricket … We played well in New Zealand and the boys are united and they feel hungry."
Afridi also offered praise for the job done by the team's coach, Waqar Younis, and manager, Intikhab Alam, in keeping everyone together. "I, Inti bhai and Waqar Younis are trying to keep the team as a unit. Our dressing room atmosphere is much better. We are trying to keep the boys as close as we can and Alhamdulillah, we are being very successful."
In the same way as the 1992 team was practically built for Australian conditions, the 2011 version has enough versatility to conquer the subcontinent. But after the country was stripped of their rights to host the World Cup in 2009, it is an easy question to ask Afridi. Is the team happy playing in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and possibly India? Afridi didn't hesistate: "We have very good support in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. [And] if we win the World Cup, it would be a good message for world cricket that we want to play cricket, and maybe next time it will be held in Pakistan as well."
He admits being named World Cup captain just two weeks before the event (exactly one week ago) was difficult, but Afridi said he was "focusing on my performance. I am always enjoying my role as a captain and as a player so I didn't take it very seriously."
When the possibility of playing a certain opponent in the final was raised, his jaded face broke into a smile. "It would be great to see Pakistan and India in the final." If things go the way Pakistan expect, he will be asked this one question over and over again.
Friday, February 11, 2011
'We should make the semi-finals' - Afridi
For the first time in three World Cup campaigns, Pakistan enters with a fresh-looking squad. Disastrous first-round exits in 2003 and 2007 were compounded by the absence of new faces, with the team reliant instead on jaded stars. But for the 2011 World Cup, seven out of Pakistan's 15-man squad have not played more than 35 ODIs, and for eight, this will be a first World Cup. It is the kind of unknown they thrive on, the kind captain Shahid Afridi feels makes them "the most dangerous team at the World Cup."
Afridi's optimism is based on more than just the newness of his squad. Since the end of the Australia tour last year, Pakistan's ODI cricket has taken on the kind of swing that has marked their finest years: days of a complete, comprehensive ineptitude mixed casually with moments of such force they cannot be stopped.
They've lost more than they've won since the Australia tour - 10 losses, 8 wins - but they've pushed good teams to the very brink, usually in direst off-field circumstances. And the immediate run-in was much needed: a first ODI bilateral series win in over two years. "For some time now we've been trying to give the team an identity, a face on the field," Afridi told ESPNcricinfo before heading off to Dhaka.
"It's coming along. We've got some good young players in the set-up now, guys like Umar [Akmal], [Ahmed] Shehzad, Wahab [Riaz] mixed with some experienced guys. I see us as the most dangerous team at the World Cup." A number of the older heads have not played in World Cups before: Misbah-ul-Haq, the vice-captain, Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman.
The balance of a potential first XI, Afridi says, is right. Two of their openers have scored centuries in recent games and a third, dangerous option is back. The middle order has patience and power, old and young and the bowling spin and pace. "We've got options and I like that. We have batsmen like Younis [Khan] and Misbah who can play long innings, guys in the middle who are power-hitters. We have wicket-taking bowlers so I'm happy that we have a balanced side."
Though he has captained the ODI side through the last year, Afridi was only appointed leader for the World Cup last week, having led the side to the series win in New Zealand. He has said previously that not getting the captaincy wouldn't affect him, but criticism of his individual form - as there has been by some former players recently - has clearly irked him.
"There is uneducated criticism of my performances from former players on TV," he said. "They should know that over the last year [in 2010] I have scored the most runs and taken the most wickets for Pakistan."
Behind those numbers - he was 2010's leading Pakistani run-scorer and joint leading wicket-taker with Shoaib Akhtar - is a more complicated story. His batting has held more substance - two hundreds and nine scores between 24 and 65 in 18 innings - are important numbers. But the bowling has lacked the wicket-taking bite of the last couple of years, averaging 45.05 per wicket and taking less than a wicket per game.
Yet the pressure of leading in the field hasn't, he says, affected him. "The pressure is there as captain for sure, to keep everyone up on the field, to get everything going, to get the field right and to do well yourself but I enjoy that. You have good and bad days but I'm confident my bowling is fine at the moment."
Afridi's own World Cup record is poor. In 12 games, spread over three tournaments, he averages 11.36 with the bat and 39.85 with the ball, an aberration he is keen to rectify. "I've not been good at past World Cups, but my role and position has never been fully settled going into them. I go into this feeling better and much more positive and, importantly, my role and place is clearer than it has been in past tournaments. There are good times and bad times but I'm hoping this will be a good World Cup for us.
"Realistically, with the kind of team we have, we should really make the semi-final and of course we want to play the final and win it - everyone does - but we should make the semi."
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Sohail Tanvir out of the World Cup
Sohail Tanvir, the left-arm seamer, has been ruled out of Pakistan's World Cup campaign after failing to complete a full rehabilitation from surgery for a knee problem that has dogged him for two years. He will be replaced by the promising young left-arm fast bowler Junaid Khan.
A PCB medical panel, after looking into a management report, said that though "the recovery from a knee operation was good, during the [New Zealand] tour it was observed that quick movements and pickup with weight particularly on the operated knee is hindering his mobility and requires him to take a few extra steps to balance himself before throwing. The medical team and team management have opined that Sohail Tanvir still requires time to attain 100% fitness before he can compete at international level."
Tanvir returned to international cricket on Pakistan's recent tour to New Zealand, where he played in five of the six ODIs. Though he bowled some good spells at the death, he looked generally rusty, picking up just 4 wickets and going for over seven runs an over. Pakistan won the series 3-2.
His batting, however, seemed to have improved, as evidenced by an audacious, unbeaten 14 off 6 balls to seal the fifth ODI. Until this series, he hadn't played for Pakistan in an ODI since May 2009 and at one stage, the knee problems threatened to end his career.
His misfortune, however, is to the benefit of Khan, who has been close to a national call-up for nearly a year now. The 21-year-old emerged at about the same time as Mohammad Amir, playing alongside him at U-19 level for Pakistan. He has been a consistent wicket-taker at domestic level, in all forms of the game, and given that he plays most of his cricket for one of the traditionally weaker regions, Abbottabad (in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province), it is an impressive record.
Former Test spinner and selector Iqbal Qasim, who first picked him for junior level, believes he has immense potential and was impressed initially by his pace as well as stamina. Some observers, at that early stage, felt Khan might make it to the national side before Amir, though he hasn't, they say, developed as swiftly. But he has been playing for the Pakistan A side regularly now, and is familiar at least with where Pakistan will play their first game of the World Cup: last September he took nine wickets in a 'Test' against Sri Lanka A in Hambantota, where Pakistan will take on Kenya on January 23.
The PCB said the ICC's technical committee had approved the request.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
'I will be back' - Mohammad Amir
As Mohammad Amir left the Qatar Financial Centre in Doha Saturday evening, having just been banned for five years, he was surrounded by a small, but scarily enthusiastic group of Pakistan fans. They had waited most of the day outside and when he appeared, they flooded around him, chanting his name, slamming the ICC, telling him to be strong and when they had nothing else, shouting 'Pakistan Zindabad'. But they were so intense that Amir eventually had to go back inside, like he was Justin Bieber and the fans, 13-year-old girls.They did the same with the two other two players, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt, who were part of this hearing and who have been given harsher punishments, but the love just didn't feel the same. Inside the building, as Amir's articulate lawyer Shahid Karim picked through the verdict, Amir stood away, alone. An early-morning kind of daze seemed to have taken him over.
All through the hearings it has been this way. Amir's youth, Amir's innocence, Amir's talent, Amir's outswing, Amir's hair, Amir's T-shirt, Amir's background: he's the only one of the three who has spoken to the press through the actual hearing. At once he's become the focus of the Lord's Three as well as an entirely separate entity removed from it.
Later in the evening, on closer inspection, it became apparent Amir had been crying. "Today was the worst day of my life," he said. "Cricket has given me everything and it has been everything and if I don't play it I have nothing. I left education to play cricket and I have nothing other than cricket."
Naturally not much was said on the case itself. Throughout he veered between tenuous hope and despair, with nothing in between. "For a cricketer whose life is cricket, this is like destroying their life," he said. Immediately he added, "One shouldn't lose hope because in life if Allah closes one door, he opens hundred others."
He couldn't say what he had learnt from it all. One question he'd be down, the next not up, but not so down. "It just seems that everything is finished and that my career never happened. Who knows what is written for me now?" And then, "These things happen in life and I haven't lost my courage yet. Who knows that lies ahead for me?" Only this time, he spoke of the future as if there might be one.
Like Butt, he disagreed with the verdicts and sanctions. The players maintained their innocence through the last day. He did repeat what seems to have emerged as the most intriguing point of the whole affair: that the tribunal was keen on giving lower sentences, to at least two players if not all three. That seemed strangely at odds - perhaps even a little disconnected - with what the rest of the cricket world was thinking and from all the speculation about sanctions beforehand, not once did this particular permutation appear.
"Two no-balls should not be five years punishment, they have said this themselves," Amir said. "I will also say it is too much and I wasn't expecting it. I can't think clearly right now."
An appeal will be filed with the Court of Arbitration Sports now though it will not be as straightforward perhaps as Amir's reading of it. "We will file an appeal there and hope to get something. The law there is different to ICC law."
He ends the only way he, or anyone in the situation really, could, with a proclamation that he will be back and an acknowledgment of the support around him.
"The pain goes away a little with this kind of feeling around you. Whenever one starts a business, there are losses and successes. This is the way, when I started my career I had successes. Now this is a bad patch, but you don't wind up the business. I will work doubly hard. There are lots of grounds in Pakistan and I won't stop practicing and keeping fit. I will work doubly hard and I will be back."
ICC Cricket World Cup 2010/11 / Fixtures
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