Former Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar has blamed the country’s cricket administration for the poor show by men in green in ICC World Cup 2019. Lashing out at the Pakistan Cricket Board, the legendary cricketer said that people who understand modern-day cricket need to brought in.
In the latest video on his YouTube channel, Akhtar said that “in order to get match winners back in the team, you got to bring a match winning management”. He said that Pakistan cricket “need to really reconsider its working”.
Pointing that the team has shown an abysmal performance in the world cup, the ‘Rawalpindi Express’ urged Pakistan Prime Minister and former skipper Imran Khan to take necessary hopes in this regard.
“Our prime minister is a former cricketer and we have heard that is going to revamp the whole structure. That is what I am hoping for,” said Akhtar.
“If you want to change, you need to bring proper people who understand the game of cricket, who have played modern cricket, who have actually accomplished and not working just for money,” he added.
According to Akhtar, the Pakistani cricket team went into the world cup with a “scared mindset” and that reflected in their performance. “We cannot play with this mindset and this scared team. You need daring players who can play upfront - what used to be the character of the Pakistani team.”
Akhtar said that Pakistan now needed to play well against Bangladesh to avoid further humiliation, adding that the mess was the team’s own doing.
“This is the end of journey for Pakistan and that is because of our own faults. However, all is not lost. We need to play for our pride. Pakistan need to play well now to avoid humiliation. They need to play good game of cricket against Bangladesh,” he said, adding that “Bangladesh is going to come back hard on you”.
The former pacer also expressed disappointment at the quality of cricket in the current edition of the world cup. Akhtar said that the players today were not playing good cricket and that was evident. He further said that had there been batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting, they would have scored somewhere near 550 runs in each match.
