Former Pakistan skipper urges Pakistan to learn from India's domestic set-up

Former Pakistan skipper Salman Butt has urged Pakistan to take lessons from the way India trains its players to play cricket professionally, right from a tender age. The 38-year-old took to his YouTube channel to tell the Pakistan cricket team and the management as to how they can take lessons from India's cricketing set-up.

Salman belives that Pakistan cricket needs to revamp its domestic structure at the grass root level to unearth remarkable talent in the days to come.

"Other teams like our own (Pakistan) struggle to win games while chasing big scores despite coming in a position to win the game," the 38-year-old said in a video on his YouTube channel. He feels the Men in Blue find batters with a temperament to play long innings because they are backed to do so right from age-group cricket.

"They (teams) should learn and adopt this (India's system). You need to make such tournaments and let the kids develop their skills. In five-ten years' time, these skills will automatically be instilled within them."

The left-handed batter further elucidated that India has successfully been able to instill among the players the dedication to play for long in cricket from a very young age. That is why Indian cricketers are so successful on the world stage.

"The real credit for such domination from India in the 200-club goes to junior-level cricket, where the batters are committed to playing for long periods. Since there is no pressure of time, your skills to score runs using the right shots and set up the bowlers to pick wickets get developed more."

Butt believes that the current lot of Pakistani cricketers aren't capable enough to play the longer formats of the game because they are channeled to just concentrate on T20s. He stressed on the importance of having the right process in place.

"Our batters score fifties and get dismissed because we have given them 80-90 percent T20 cricket at the junior level and university level. We haven't given priority to longer formats and so they get out playing reckless shots because they just don't have those skills. Gill played such a brilliant knock at such a young age only because of the exposure and the right process that he has got."

Shubman Gill became the youngest batter and the fifth Indian to smash an ODI double hundred and Butt feels Pakistan should look at that success and implement changes in their domestic structure.

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