Pakistan have failed to embrace modern cricket, rues coach Mickey Arthur

The Pakistan team registered a clinical 2-1 win over the West Indies in the recent ODI series. Prior to that, they had also managed to win the T20I series. Despite the wins, their head coach Mickey Arthur is a worried man. He is disappointed with the fact that the team lacks precision when it comes to a complete performance. He feels that the players have failed to adapt to the modern day cricket.

The current world of cricket is all about proper hitting and hitting it big. All teams have some hitters in their line up. However, when it comes to Pakistan, the team lacks a proper finisher. The likes of Sarfraz Ahmed, Shoaib Malik have done the job sporadically but have been far from being consistent. Needless to say, coach Mickey Arthur is a disappointed man.

He noted that there are a lot of factors like not playing in the IPL that is costing the team. However, the team needs to combat these factors and come up good against all odds.

“I’ve told the players that we were playing cricket that belonged in the 20th century. We hadn’t embraced the new modern game yet, and that was for a number of reasons, like not playing at home, or [not] having the exposure to the IPL that the rest of the world has had. So there were a lot of mitigating factors, but the fact is, if we’ve got to compete with them, we have to start embracing the modern trend,” quoted Mickey Arthur.

He reflected back to the recent series and also the tour down under. He noted how the lack of power hitters always served as a curse to the team. Adding further, he pointed out that Sharjeel Khan was a promising talent. But his involvement in spot-fixing came as a major blow to the team.

“It [lack of power hitters] is a worry. When we get on good wickets, we can’t match the other countries. In Australia, I felt we always started 20-30 runs behind them because they could maximize the last ten overs. Teams are getting hundred runs in the last ten overs now. We’re getting 70, at best. We didn’t get a run-a-ball in the last five overs the other day in a T20 [against West Indies]. That’s not good enough; that’s not going to win us games. We don’t have the ability to take on the power players, which is so disappointing, because we did with Sharjeel [Khan], so to lose him is a massive blow,” the former South African coach noted.

Having said that, Arthur is seeing the silver lining in the fact that still have 2 years to go for the ICC World Cup. They will try to fix these bugs and get back to the drawing board hard and strong.

“We’re training it; we’ve got drills and techniques that we’re putting into play. Hopefully, all that comes to fruition, because we’ve got two years till the World Cup, and in the World Cup, we’ve got to be as good as we can possibly be,” Mickey Arthur conceded.