Buoyant Azhar confident of Pakistan's direct qualification for World Cup

Series win against West Indies lifted Men in Green one place to eighth in ODI rankings


Afp October 06, 2016
Pakistan's bowler Sohail Khan (2L) celebrates with his teammates after bowling out West Indies' Evin Lewis during the 3rd T20I cricket match between Pakistan and the West Indies at the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi on October 5, 2016. PHOTO: AFP

ABU DABHI: Pakistan ODI captain Azhar Ali insisted on Thursday that his fast developing team is well set to qualify directly for the 2019 World Cup.

Pakistan whitewashed the West Indies 3-0 with a convincing 136-run win in the third and final one-dayer in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

The series win lifted Pakistan one place to eighth in the current rankings and relegating the West Indies to ninth in the fight for a direct berth at the World Cup finals in three years' time.

Clean sweep: Triple-ton Azam leads series win against WI


Hosts England and the top seven teams in the one-day rankings on September 30, 2017 will get a direct place in the World Cup.

The bottom four teams in the standings will be joined by six Associate sides in a 10-team qualifying round in 2018 from where only two teams will qualify.

Azhar, who himself scored a delightful hundred on Wednesday, said the win over West Indies was important in the quest for a World Cup place."It was an important series and it's just the start of more challenges," said Azhar. "We have to keep this improvement with one year to go for the [World Cup 2019] deadline."

Azhar urges nation to be patient


Since the 2015 World Cup, Pakistan had slumped to ninth after being routed 3-0 in Bangladesh and suffering defeats against England (in the United Arab Emirates last year and in England) and New Zealand.

But Azhar, who became the first Pakistani captain in the 50-over format, believes the confidence level of the players was high after the series win over the struggling West Indies.

"We have good players who have gelled well," said Ali, who singled out batsman Babar Azam for his three successive hundreds. "Babar [Azam] stood out in this series and to score consistently with back-to-back hundreds shows that he has that hunger. He has given a world class performance," said Ali of the 21-year-old.

Azam scored 120, 123 and 117 in the three matches to become only the third Pakistani and eighth batsmen in all one-day cricket to hit three consecutive hundreds.

Azhar also credited new head coach Mickey Arthur with the improvements. "Mickey has an important role," said Ali of the former South African and Australian coach who took over in May this year.

"It's a full team and the credit also goes to the selection committee, fielding coach Steve Rixon, physio Grant Luden and [batting coach] Grant Flower -- all have contributed a lot so it's a full team."

Pakistan's next one-day series will be in Australia early next year and Azhar feels his team has the potential to do well. "We can challenge Australia as well because we have new players who are match winners."

COMMENTS (2)

Waseem Sarwar | 7 years ago | Reply @Hussain: To get close games, you need to have a good enough team too. In recent series loss in England, can you see any Pakistani player getting into English side? We haven't got good enough players to play modern ODI cricket regularly. Our success formula will still be to score 300 and defend it like you life depends on it. Azhar is doing very decent with what team he has.
Hussain | 7 years ago | Reply Still feel Azhar shouldn't be the captain. Quite lucky to have this series as he had some individual brilliant performances from some players in the team and West Indies were quite poor all round. Had these been tight games, surely his clueless captaincy would have been exposed. But as is the case with Pakistani teams, they will go to Australia, get beaten 3-0 and then fresh round of criticisms and musical chairs will start. For the long term, a decision should have already been made to make Sarfaraz the captain in this series. The sooner it happens the better for Pakistan team Azhar should definitely be in the team as a batsman along with Asad Shafiq but captaincy is not everyone's cup of tea. Heard he refused to give it up despite the 4-1 drubbing in England- typical of the past Pakistani captains
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