Misbah-ul-Haq expects better result in next Test against South Africa

Pakistan skipper Misbah-ul-Haq has shown disappointment over his team’s loss in the opening Test against South Africa, but expects better result in the upcoming games.

Talking at the presentation ceremony, he said that his team has learnt a few good lessons from a terrible 211-run loss. He, meanwhile, didn’t forget to give credit to the Proteas for their wonderful work.

The Green Shirts were awful in the first innings, as the entire side collapsed on 49 in reply to South Africa’s 253. The Men in Green showed some improvement in the second innings, but the effort was not enough.

Thanks to Dale Steyn’s 11 wickets, the South Africans easily won the game, taking 1-0 lead in the series. At the end of the encounter, Misbah shared that the batsmen could have done better, if they had seen off the new ball.

Misbah-ul-Haq stated: "I think that was a great spell of innings, that hurt us really. I think such a big batting line-up, we got them 250- something, we could have scored 300 runs or equal to them, this could have been a good Test
match. I think everybody knows that once we can see off the new ball, we can score runs, I think in the next match you will see that. They are the No. 1 side, but they have top-class bowlers, top-class batsmen, we can learn a lot from them."

Winning skipper Graeme Smith said: "You always get a bit nervous in milestone game, people could say that you are not totally focused. We knew we wanted to bat first, we were looking at 250-odd, but we left ourselves down a little bit.
But we knew the cracks would come into effect. Blessed to have Steyn in the attack, No. 1 bowler in the world, he has been helped Morkel and Philander.”

“Hopefully AB has silenced the critics with his keeping, our intensity on the third morning was very good. We’ve got two Tests left this summer, hopefully back in Cape Town the turnout will be amazing. Think I’m going to go home tonight
and spend two days in bed to recover from all the emotions, all the support from the fans."

The Man of the Match, Dale Steyn described: "I bowled quite nicely (grins), AB’s hundred, Biff’s 100th Test as captain, the decision to bat on a tough track, that’s what this team is about, great performance from the team. I’ve not
been able to pick up wickets at the top in recent times but glad I did it here.”

“I’d like to say I’ve bowled better in the nets, but this is what counts. We wanted to try and get these wickets as quickly as possible today, the guys pushed hard, there wasn’t a lot of chances, we were pumped to try and finish off the game. Things just
kind of clicked, the ball just came out nicely, there’s not much thinking going on, your natural instinct takes over, I just got the ball in my hand and ran in and bowled."

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Feb 4 2013. Filed under Pakistan, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry