Once deemed all but out of the T20 World Cup 2022 semi-finals race, Pakistan earned a bonus ticket to the last four, courtesy of Netherlands’ triumph over South Africa in the Super 12s. Pakistan then defeated New Zealand in the semi-finals before suffering a defeat at the hands of England in the final. While Pakistan do have a runners-up medal to their name in the tournament, their former player Mohammad Amir doesn’t feel the team deserved to even qualify for the final.
In a conversation on News 24HD, Amir gave his honest assessment of Pakistan’s T20 World Cup campaign. He reiterated that the team’s batting wasn’t up to the mark for almost the entire tournament.
“The fact that we played in the final is a big thing. We didn’t deserve to play in the final. The whole world knows how we advanced to the final. Allah helped us reach there. You will get to know the results if you look at the performance of our batters. Once we got out of Sydney, it was given that this would happen,” Amir said.
“I told you earlier that if the pitch at MCG is the same as it was in the first match, Pakistan will struggle and we did. After winning the toss, we got off to a good start and we knew how the conditions were,” he added.
We didn’t deserve to reach the final – Mohammad Amir pic.twitter.com/oi3OUeo05H
— Ghumman (@emclub77) November 13, 2022
In his scathing assessment of the team, Amir even said that although Mohammad Haris showed ‘intent’ he also needs to have some ‘sense’ about what shots to play and when.
“We talked about Haris and his intent. But along with intent, you also need to have sense. On the first ball, he faced off Adil Rashid, he tried to come down the track.
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“On these pitches, you can’t leave it to someone else. The new batter will struggle. Ben Stokes showed that experience and game-awareness,” Amir asserted.
Pakistan’s bowling attack has widely been described as the ‘best in the world’ in the format for the manner in which they fought while defending a low total of 137 runs. But, the batting unit, including skipper Babar Azam, remains a work in progress.
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