Mohammad Yousuf criticizes senior Pakistani cricketers for their 'selfish' natures

The Pakistan cricket team is currently placed 8th in the ODI ranking with 89 points. And they have recently lost an ODI series (1-4) in Australia. Right now it is very tough for the Pakistan team to qualify directly for the World Cup 2019. According to the ICC rules, only the top 7 teams in ICC rankings as of September 30, 2017, will earn automatic qualification while, the remaining teams will have to earn their spot by battling it out in the 2018 Cricket World Cup qualifiers scheduled to take place in Bangladesh. Though they won the ODI series against the West Indies by 2-1 and increased their chances of a direct entry into the world cup, concerns still remain regarding Pakistan approach in the ODI format, particularly with their batting.

Today, Pakistan former captain Mohammad Yousuf said in an interview that, he believes it’s the “selfish” nature of the team’s senior batsmen that has been the major issue in the batting line up. He also added that “I will go as far as to say that these senior batsmen in the Pakistan One-Day team are putting their own averages ahead of the team’s requirements. It seems like they are more interested in scoring a fifty than they are in ensuring that Pakistan wins. In the modern game, playing a selfish innings of forty or fifty runs at a strike-rate of seventy five doesn’t help anyone. Our batsmen in the modern game achieve a strike-rate of eighty and they are ecstatic; well sorry but these days that does not work. Anyone can make a half century at a poor strike-rate, but what really counts are the innings that change the course of a match. We are not seeing enough of these match-winning innings from our batsmen”. For a matter of fact, the Pakistani batting was not upto the level and their strike rate was very poor during the Australia Series. During the West-Indies series even if the Pakistani’s scored well, their strike rate was not worth praising. The former captain also pointed out that the Pakistan batsmen are also not able to counter pace bowlers in the recent matches. He also suggested the team to change the batting line up and asked them to improve their batting techniques.

Recently on April 5th, Pakistan cricket chief selector and former captain Inzamam-Ul-Haq also mentioned that Pakistan needs some power hitters who can bat aggressively in the closing stages of the game.