Mohammad Hafeez comes out in defence of Dav Whatmore

Pakistan’s T20 skipper, Mohammad Hafeez is delighted to have won the T20 series against South Africa and feels that the criticism on the team after their disastrous performance in the Test series is unjustified.

The Green Shirts came to South Africa with the hopes of giving a tough time to the home team but that was not to be as they were thrashed by Graeme Smith and company. A number of former cricketers and sporting analysts in the country have slammed Misbah-ul-Haq and Dav Whatmore after the Test series and feel that the duo should be sacked.

However, Pakistan came back strongly and outclassed the Proteas in the second T20 by 95 runs at Centurion to claim the two-match series, with the first encounter at Durban been washed out. Mohammad Hafeez and Umar Gul were the stars of the show for the visitors.

Hafeez, who was also named as the Player of the Match for his 86 runs and three wickets, openly defended the Test side and expressed that poor performance in one series does not make a team bad. He showed complete faith on Whatmore’s coaching skills and said that the former Australian cricketer has been working very hard with the boys.

“It was unfair. If the results of one format do not come in your favour, it does not mean the boys are not working hard or the coach is not good enough,” he said. “And it does not mean that if we win the coach is working harder. He was working the same way with us throughout. We are all behind him and we’ve all been working hard.”

The captain further added that the team was geared up to deliver the goods in the T20 series and hopes that the boys will perform well in the upcoming ODI battle as well. The all-rounder admitted that his team was not quite up to the mark in the Test series.

“We really wanted to do something good in this format because of the ODIs coming up. We knew the importance of this game,” Hafeez added. “Tests require a different discipline but here everyone just played without fear.”

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Posted by Yasir Hashmi on Mar 4 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.