One Test is never a fair assessment, need to give players ample opportunities: Shan Masood

Ahead of the Boxing Day Test against Australia in Melbourne, Pakistan skipper Shan Masood called for patience and urged the fans to believe in the team's processes. The 34-year-old mentioned that Pakistan want to continue playing an attacking brand of cricket, despite the 360-run loss in the first Test in Perth, as they have found success by doing so in Sri Lanka. 

He explained that the goal is to build a proper red-ball structure and bring more players into the mix, but also give ample opportunities to the current batch to seal their places. Despite an embarrassing loss in Perth, Masood is hopeful of a strong comeback as he mentioned that one Test match is never a fair assessment of the talent that his team possesses.

“One Test is never a fair assessment. You need time. You need a bit more time. You've already got a squad that's been playing Test cricket for a while. You have to look at the domestic structure and the players available for red-ball cricket. A lot of things you need before you can sort of force that way of playing," Masood was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.

“You need players to buy in. We want to give players ample opportunity to buy into the way we want to play. There are some things that we've said from the outside that we want to play a more attractive brand of Test cricket. We did that in Sri Lanka. We got some results as well. The challenge now is to do it against the best teams in world cricket,” he added.

Mohammad Rizwan is ready, we can give Sarfaraz little bit of break: Shan Masood

Sarfaraz Ahmed failed to make a mark in the opening Test and Pakistan are set to bring Mohammad Rizwan back into the set-up. Skipper Masood confirmed the development and explained that the latter played a lot of white-ball cricket in the recent past and was given time to adjust to red-ball.

“Rizwan just came from the World Cup. And he also had a gap in red-ball cricket since Sarfaraz took over from him for the New Zealand series. Sarfaraz had an outstanding performance there and Rizwan hadn't played a lot of red-ball cricket. So there was a method to it. He's been there, he played red-ball cricket," he said.

"Karachi had a very good season where he was the tournament's MVP, and that allowed us to get a player like Rizwan into shape. If I had it my way, I'd ideally like both to play but that's not possible. Now we think Rizwan is ready and we can give Saifi that little bit of break to recuperate and come back,” Masood added.