Mickey Arthur was thrilled when he was asked to return
to the Pakistan team as the director of cricket in April of this year because
of the appeal of seeing the young lads he initially trained in 2016 grow into
men of significance today.
He also started reworking their playing approach as
soon as he assumed leadership. The “Bazball” approach, which England
has adapted over the past several years with tremendous success in Test
cricket, is a variation of the “batting reinvention.”
Arthur acknowledges that one of his challenges was to
persuade everyone to support the plan before trying to carry it out and getting
everyone to stick with it in a situation with high stakes.
“A part of the attraction for me coming back was
that all these young boys that I worked with who have now become men,”
Arthur said ahead of Pakistan’s World Cup opener against Netherlands. “The
brand of cricket, that’s something that we are trying to get through to our
players. They have embraced it. It’s going take a take a little bit of time,
but I always say this, there’s always two ways to skin a cat.
“I think our bowling attack is up there as one of
the best. And with runs on the board, our bowlers can generally defend that.
You watch the likes of England and Australia playing this brand of cricket,
ours will also follow that. There’s no doubt. They’re good enough to do that,
but we are playing a brand that, we call it the ‘Pakistan way’. We are playing
a brand that is very, very particular to Pakistan and suits our team, our team
dynamic. That’s the brand that we are going play and hopefully win the World
Cup with.”
Arthur is confident in his team’s chances despite the
fact that they are missing Naseem Shah due to injury and that their spin pair
of Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz hasn’t exactly been lighting up the pitch.
Shadab’s six wickets during the Asia Cup included four
against Nepal. He hasn’t produced particularly impressive ball returns since
that game. But because of the special bat performances he can produce, Arthur
and other coaches have a tendency to give him a longer rope.
“I wholeheartedly back Shadab,” Arthur said.
“He’s a wonderful cricketer. You look at his package of bowling, batting,
fielding, it’s exceptional. If we look at his bowling in isolation, he’s just
short of a little confidence. He hasn’t lost his ability to turn the ball. His
googly is still very, very good. He’s one performance away from getting that
confidence back and making sure that he has a real big influence on this World
Cup. So I’d like that to come tomorrow [against Netherlands], but I’m not
worried about Shadab because I know he’s a quality player.”