Tour of South Africa: Team’s performance was satisfactory, says Zaka

PCB chief content but former players call on seniors to make way for young blood.

KARACHI:

Pakistan’s tour of South Africa ended in disaster with the team missing an ideal chance to register their first bilateral One-Day International (ODI) series win over the Proteas, but the country’s cricket board chairman Zaka Ashraf remained satisfied with the team’s effort.

While former players called for a post-mortem after the tour – the team was thrashed in the Test series 3-0, registered a win in the only Twenty20 that took place before losing a closely-fought ODI series 3-2 – Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Ashraf said the team’s ‘overall performance was satisfactory’.

“I think the team’s performance overall has been satisfactory,” Ashraf told The Express Tribune. “In the Twenty20 format our performance was very good. We must not forget that the South Africa team is number one in the world.

“In Benoni, I met many top South Africa board’s officials and they were impressed with our team’s performance which was better than before.”

However, Ashraf said there is always room for improvement.

“There is always room and we shall be very interested to look into that.”

Pakistan suffered one of their worst defeats in the longer format of the game when they were whitewashed 3-0. After winning the Twenty20, the visitors failed to compensate for their embarrassing performance in Tests, losing the ODI series with a final loss in Benoni on Sunday to lose yet another series to South Africa.

Although the tour was deemed as one of the squad’s toughest assignments right from the beginning, former greats felt the team had opportunities to gain advantage, but failed to avail them due to a poor show from senior players.



“The series has ended and now it’s time to look ahead,” said former captain Waqar Younis after the culmination of the ODI series. “There is a need for a post-mortem.

“The management will have to see what went wrong and make decisions before the ICC Champions Trophy. We had issues with batting. Our batsmen played too slow and on top of that, our fielding was also a huge setback.”

The former captain felt many of the players were getting older and there was a need to make replacements rather than continuing with aging players.

“It’s time to induct youngsters. Why did we keep on persisting with Younus Khan when he was struggling? Where were Asad Shafiq, Umar Akmal and Umar Amin?

“There are a lot of youngsters who can be very good replacements.”

The former Pakistan coach also stressed on hiring a batting coach.

“You need to have a batting coach in international cricket. All the sides travel with a group of coaches. Inzamamul Haq was supposed to be there in South Africa.”

Speaking on the ODI series loss, Younis said it were missed opportunities that cost the team.

“We got our chances in the series but we failed to avail them. We dropped many catches, especially the ones during the last match which made a huge difference. The bowlers also failed to perform like they used to in the past.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2013.