NEWS
Follow UsPakistan Women head coach Mohammad Wasim said his team will have to get better at handling pressure if they want to compete with big teams at the ICC events. The Women in Green, on October 14 (Monday), ended their 2024 T20 World Cup campaign with just one win out of four games.
They started the competition with a 31-run victory over Sri Lanka but lost to India in the next match. Pakistan were no match to Australia, getting bundled out for 83 and allowing the opposition to chase down the target in just 11 overs.
With India losing to Australia, Pakistan still had a chance to progress to the semis. But for that, they had to chase down whatever New Zealand scored in less than 11 overs. Pakistan managed to restrict New Zealand to 110/6 but ended up getting bundled out for 56 in the second innings.
“Obviously, the results are not ideal. We were expecting a lot better performance than this. If you look at the positives, obviously our bowling lineup has been once again they have proved they are you know one of the best in the world. It's the batting area that was the problem - we identified before this event. We tried few different things, but that area is still a problem for us,” said Wasim after the loss.
“If the performance is not good, you don't blame anything for it. The biggest factor is pressure handling in big events and big occasions. We played good cricket in patches. If we look at the India match, we should have won that match. We were in a position to do so. We had 10-20 runs less, we should have won that match.
“If we had gone to win the match today, the result could have been different. But we tried our best to go for the top 4. Overall, the plans are made but execution is done on the ground. So, when you move forward, we need players around who have better pressure handling abilities and execute the plans better. I always say that the seniors in the team have to step up. Unfortunately, we see that the seniors have not stepped up in the crunch batting moments. So that’s why I said that we need to move on and bring some new faces.”
But do Pakistan have those “new faces” in the domestic circuit? “If you look at this year's domestic cricket schedule, you will see a focus that women cricket is getting more importance than before. Under-19 matches are starting, then there will be matches for seniors and different formats. So, I hope we will get talent in the future. This is not an excuse that you have no talent, so carry on with the same thing.
“When results are not coming, then you see what other options you have. When new energy, new faces come, it makes a difference. So, it's not that we don't have talent. We are doing domestic; we will closely watch what replacements we have. Because we have time before the next event. So, I hope you'll see some good talent.”
Skipper Fatima Sana (125.49) was the only Pakistan batter with a strike rate of more than 100. In fact, if we remove Nida Dar (90.90) from the list, there wasn’t a single Pakistan batter with a strike rate of more than 80. “The mindset you're talking about, the perfect example of that, which has been adopted the best, is done by Fatima only, and you can see that in the results, whether you look at her body language, in bowling, in the field, and when it comes to batting.
“The rest of the team had to pick this up. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. After the match, we can talk a lot about how things would have been different. Overall, we couldn't deliver. Failures, you have to accept it. But we could have played better cricket,” added Wasim.
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