Image Credit- Getty
Shortly after Pakistan lost the second Test against
Australia at the MCG by 79 runs, an emotional Mohammad Hafeez declared that his
squad was “the better team”.
Salman Ali Agha and Mohammad Rizwan’s partnership
helped Pakistan near the mark of 317 in an exciting match where Australia could
never really pull away from the visitors until the last thirty minutes. With
five wickets remaining, they needed to win by 98 runs, but when Rizwan was
removed, the final five wickets fell for 18 runs in 40 balls.
“We played better cricket as a team,”
Hafeez, the Pakistan team director, said. “I’m proud of that. The way the
team had the courage to attack this game in the best possible way. If I sum up
the game, the Pakistan team played better than the other team in general. Our
batting intent was better, and while bowling, we were hitting the right areas.
Yes, we made some mistakes that cost us the game but as a team I believe that
there were a lot of positives, enough to win the game but unfortunately at the
end we didn’t win the game.”
As Hafeez hinted at, Pakistan was left to regret many
of their own missteps. The most noteworthy of those were Abdullah Shafique’s
two simple lost catches at first slip, one in each innings. After being dropped
on the second session, David Warner added 84 with Usman Khawaja to form the
opening partnership. All of those errors were brutally punished.
“We saw Abdullah wasn’t feeling comfortable out
there,” Hafeez said. “As a team, you always back your team-mates if
something is not going well for them. But we made this decision thinking if
he’s not feeling comfortable, Babar is a better slip fielder, so why not make
the change? He should take the lead and go to first slip. I think that also
worked out very well for me as a director because I could see the right person
was doing that job. Obviously, Abdullah is also a good fielder, but he wasn’t
feeling confident in the slips.
“These guys have been training together for the
last year. [Abdullah] did a very good job as a slip fielder. Fielding here in
different conditions might have disturbed him but I still believe that he’s a
good fielder. Maybe the confidence went away which, as a slip fielder, can
happen. Once that confidence goes away from you, you need a little bit of time
away from the role.”
“If we had taken our chances and won those
crucial moments, perhaps this match would have ended earlier and we would have
won. But this is the way the game goes; if you make a mistake this game can
hurt you.”