New Delhi, Nov 12: Pakistan head coach Mickey Arthur gave an open and blunt assessment of why his team failed to reach the semi-finals of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023. Arthur was grilled on the big issues surrounding the Pakistan team following their 93-run loss to England on Saturday. “I don’t think we played our best game here,” Arthur said.
“I think I really believe the best four teams in the competition are now playing in the semi-finals.
“Inconsistency, unfortunately, doesn’t breed success. But that is no excuse at all. The fact is, we haven’t played well enough.
“We finished fifth, and fifth is where we deserve to finish with the cricket that we’ve played over the last six weeks.”
“I think what we’ve seen, and it’s something that we’ve continually tried to push, is that we’re behind the eight ball,” the coach said, discussing Pakistan’s approach to ODI cricket with both bat and ball.“Our game needs to go to another level. Our bowling attack, we get Naseem Shah, I think we miss Naseem. But if you have him, our bowling attack’s good.
“Batting-wise, we have to become a 330-350 team. The teams that are doing that and doing that consistently are the teams that are in the semi-final. And I don’t think we’ve done that consistently enough. We do that when Fakhar Zaman comes off and we can’t just be relying on one player.” “We know exactly where we need to go to. We need to know what we need to do. Planning’s already started.
“But ultimately, we can only control what we can. What we can control is how we prepare our players. What we control is the messaging that we give to our players. We can’t control anything else. What will be, will be in that regard. But we’ve got to stay consistent.
“We’ve got a very impressionable young group of players now. There’s some very good young players who are going to have big careers.
We need to just keep preaching them the right messaging. We’ve got to stay consistent, stay consistent around our selection, stay consistent around our messaging, and allow those guys an environment which allows them to play and play to the best of their ability.” “We were a real tight knit unit. I get behind Babar, and Babar is very close to me.
“He’s a young guy that needs to be taken on the journey. He needs to be shown the ropes. He’s still learning all the time. (Agencies)