Aamer Sohail comes out in support of Misbah-ul-Haq

Former captain of the Pakistan team, Aamer Sohail has come out in defence of Misbah-ul-Haq and feels that the criticism on the middle-order batsman is not justified. The former opening batsman is of the view that the disastrous result in the Test series against South Africa was very much expected.

Graeme Smith and company thrashed the Green Shirts by three games to none in the recently-concluded Test series. Pakistan’s batting line-up miserably failed to deliver the goods against the number one ranked Test team of the world, much to the disappointment of the Pakistan fans, who were expecting their team to put up a fight because of a talented bowling line-up.

A number of former cricketers and sporting analysts have slammed Misbah for his negative approach and feel that the best way to counter the South African pacers would have been to play with an aggressive mindset.

However, Sohail, who played 47 Tests and 156 ODIs for Pakistan between 1990 and 2000, expressed that the result in the series would not have been different even if someone else was leading the team.

The former cricketer thinks that the domestic cricket structure of the country is flawed and does not have the capacity to produce high-quality batsmen.

“Criticism of Misbah is unjust. We all knew what was going to happen [in South Africa]. Criticising him is not right,” Sohail expressed. “What we need to do is fix the system – spend our energy on working on how to beat Australia and South Africa away. Once you have the answers to those questions, everything else will fall into place itself.”

When asked about having different teams for different formats of the game, Sohail thinks that most good cricketers are able to adjust to different versions and there is no need to have completely different squads.

“A good player will play well in all formats – we have examples from Australian players and Indian players. There is the odd one-day or T20 specialist, not the whole team. Invest time in those players who will perform all over the world. Only then will you bring stability to cricket,” he added.

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Posted by Yasir Hashmi on Feb 27 2013. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.