Image Credit- AFP
The new captain of the Pakistani squad, Mohammad
Hafeez, is looking for “excitement” amid the difficult possibility of
his team’s three-Test visit of Australia, a country where they had lost the
previous 14 Test matches.
Despite never having played a Test match in Australia,
Hafeez, who serves as both the team director and the squad’s effective head
coach, urged his team to play modern, aggressive cricket and view Pakistan’s
losing streak as a chance rather than a handicap on the eve of their departure.
“When there is an excitement in your challenge,
when there is a nothing-to-lose opportunity and a lot to gain, you’re
winning,” Hafeez said. “As a team our goal is not what history says
but what we can go out there and achieve. The mindset is very clear – this is a
very exciting challenge ahead of us and, together, we can bring better results.
I can’t answer for past results, but from here on you will see inshallah better
results for Pakistan.”
Reading those previous outcomes is depressing. It is
difficult to break a series of fourteen defeats spanning three generations—four
by an innings, one by almost 500 runs, and three by nine or ten wickets.
Pakistan departs early on Thursday morning, carrying
some of the chaos from the past. This year, they have a fifth chief selector,
no official head coach (Grant Bradburn is still officially with the PCB), a new
captain who never feels too far away from being dropped (as Shan Masood’s 30
Tests in ten years and an average under 30 show). The former team director,
Mickey Arthur, has been sidelined but not let go.
Hafeez remains confident. “It is an exciting
challenge and I repeat that a lot because when you want to gain something, you
get excited. Naseem is injured, but I don’t think you can pin losses on the
absence of one player. Every player has to deliver.
“In this team, the bowling unit has good bowlers,
the best ones in the Pakistan system have been selected. The bowling line-up
that we have, I have a very strong gut feeling that they can give winning
performances there. When you take 20 wickets, that is when you have a chance of
winning. I think our bowling is capable of doing that.”