Mickey Arthur feels onus is on Azhar Ali after Misbah, Younis exit

Pakistan’s head coach, Mickey Arthur, is confident of putting up a good show against Sri Lanka despite the exit of two of their stalwarts of Test cricket. When Pakistan takes on Sri Lanka on Thursday, it will be there first Test after the retirement of Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq. As per the recent quotes in Cricbuzz, Arthur noted that the team is keen on improving their rankings.

He mentioned that the next goal that the team is setting at the moment is their tour to South Africa in the 2018-19 season. Arthur wishes to see the team escalate higher from the sixth position where they are currently languishing in the rankings.

“I think we’re ranked sixth at the moment and we have to work on getting it down. We have set ourselves some realistic goals. South Africa 2019 (Pakistan will be touring the South Africa in 2018-19) is our ultimate goal. That’s where we want to be where we think we can be with this group of players,” quoted Mickey Arthur.

Youngster stepping up

With the exit of the senior members from the side, Mickey Arthur hopes that the youngster will take responsibility. Also, he feels that the senior members like Azhar Ali and Babar Azam will now have to shoulder more responsibility across the different forms of the game. He very well knows that the results of each and every series matters at this point of time. Arthur is excited about the upcoming times in Pakistan cricket and is looking forward to the challenges.

“Of course it will be very unfair to the guys you bring in to the team to say they are the replacements. I think it is now on people like Azhar Ali, who has been superb for us last year in the Tests. Asad Shafiq, and to a lesser extent Babar Azam – it is incumbent on those three guys standing up taking the bulk of the runs now. The other guys are young and inexperienced and are where Azam was a year ago and Shafiq a couple of years ago. Every series we go into we want to win, as we are judged on that,” conceded the Pakistani head coach.

“It is a new dawn for us as we are going to see some fresh and young faces. I think that is very exciting in taking the team forward,” he conceded further.