Sarfraz Ahmed pledges to ‘fight hard’ to beat India

Pakistan captain says team is focused on the same objective of winning the tournament

Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed on Friday said that the team is focused on winning the Champions Trophy for the first time and they’ll try their best to kick-off their campaign by beating India in their opening match on June 4 at Edgbaston.

Sarfraz, while talking to reporters, added that team wants to perform well in practice matches against Bangladesh and Australia to get a good boost before the main rounds.

“We are really hopeful,” said Sarfraz. “First of all we want to perform well in the practice matches as a team. We will try to play good cricket against India. The whole country wishes that we beat India so we will try to give our 100% in the ground, and we’ll try to fight as much as we can. All the guys will put in their efforts in all the departments, and when everyone is focused on the same objective, then positive results will come out.”

‘Preparations helped’

Pakistan went to Birmingham to prepare for the English conditions and they have been practicing in Edgbaston for the past few days and the 30-year-old believes all the time invested will reap results.

“They [the warm-up games] will help a lot,” said Sarfraz. “We had a six-day camp here, we used it really well. We had good fielding, bowling and batting sessions here. The warm-up games will help us evaluate the conditions in Edgbaston because we play two round matches here.”

On a question of whether they will be under some sort of pressure, Sarfraz said: “Champions Trophy is like a mini World Cup and every team wants to win it. Likewise, the team including me hope to do good in this tournament and win it.”

‘Nothing to lose’

Sarfraz believes his side will "have nothing to lose" when the Champions Trophy get underway in England and Wales next week.

Despite completing series wins in all formats during their recent tour of the West Indies, Pakistan have not been spoken of as one of the favourites to win the tournament, which features the world's top eight ODI teams.

Pakistan begin their campaign against arch-rivals India at Edgbaston on June 4 in arguably the match of the tournament, with South Africa and Sri Lanka their other two opponents in the group stage.

But an undaunted Sarfraz said: "We have nothing to lose, we just want to play our natural game. We are very hopeful of playing well in this tournament and we want to win it."

The wicketkeeper-batsman added: "Against the West Indies, we had a big fielding improvement. We don't see us as having a surprise element, we want to come here and play free cricket, starting against India.”

Sarfraz will be leading the Pakistan side in his first major tournament and he says he is excited and looking up to the challenge. “This is my first major tournament as captain, I'm definitely very hopeful and excited about the competition,” he said. “My aim is to play my own game, to not play under pressure and to just play as I do in domestic cricket."