Pakistan and India ready to meet any challenge in T20 World Cup

Anuradha Abeysekera

Pakistan Captain Mohammad Hafeez said that playing away from home is always a difficult task. But his team will take it as a challenge and are ready to face it in the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka. He said so at a media session along with Indian skipper M. S. Dhoni and Zimbabwe captain Brendan Taylor at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo, yesterday.

“If we do our basics right, we’ll have a big chance of winning the T20 World Cup. Most of our players took part in the recently concluded Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) and experienced the conditions at both, Keththarama and Pallekele pitches,” said Hafeez. “I always try to give 100% to my country in all three formats of the game and enjoy captaining the team in this quicker version. I am very confident of my side and we have done great things in recent times. Hafeez also spoke about their strong coaching staff and said their feed backs and guidance improved the team. We are fortunate to have the services of cricket legend Javed Miandad on our coaching panel who was a former captain and one of the best batsmen in the world. Shahid Afridi’s return has also boosted confidence in the team, Hafees revealed.

“The warm-up match against India will be a good example while allowing us to play under pressure and get accustomed to it. The meeting will also bring Pakistan and India more closer and we hope to perform well, The Pakistan Captain explained.

Indian skipper Dhoni said that the ranking will not matter for this format of game and any team is capable of changing the fate of a match if they play smart and bold cricket for nearly three and half hours. India as one time T20 champions and reigning ODI champions are determined to win the T20 crown again by being consistent from the beginning.

“You have to compromise between batsmen and bowlers to field the right combination for a particular match and luckily most of Indian players have played a lot of international T20s and are familiar with this format. As the skipper I am happy to have Yuvraj Singh on board. He is a match winner and a good all rounder who will be of great strength,” Dhoni said.

Despite being in the tough group, the Zimbabwe skipper Brendan Taylor was enthusiastic that his team will showcase their talents.

We had some hard times in the past, but we are now playing good cricket. I have played in the SLPL and have some experience of Sri Lankan pitches. We will mostly rely on top order batting and spin bowling. It’ll be extremely tough for us with totally different conditions. We had good six weeks of practices as a team before we came here and the players are ready to perform to the best of their ability’ said Taylor.