Losing Tie Match in Strange Way Unfortunate: Malik
'Pakistan Times' Business & Commerce Desk

DURBAN: Pakistan Cricket captain Shoaib Malik said it was unfortunate to lose the match in a strange way in the bowl-out format against India in the Twenty-20 Cricket Cup here.

“I could not believe that we will lose the match after being so close at one stage and then sadly we could not do good in the bowl-out format”, he said on Saturday.

Pak-India group D match ended in a tie and then India performed better hitting of stumps in the bowl-out stage to secure a victory.

He said the bowl-out system was quite new for them and the team was without much practice for that special part in which a bowler targeted stumps.

“Indians were bettered prepared and they beat us in that part (bowl out) but I will say we did not lose the match in a way because we fought till the end”, he said.

Shaoib Malik agreed that Pakistan batting line needed to improve as it couldn’t perform well in the two preliminary round matches (against Scotland and India).

“Definitely we have to show improvement as bowlers did a great job, especially Muhammad Asif and then their hard work was spoiled by a few batting flaws and I believe in the coming stage of the tournament more perfection and responsibility lies on part of batsmen”, he asserted.

He said he felt hurt having lost in that manner and that he was not expecting that the match would end that way.

“I was very unfortunate but Misbah ul Haq was on the wicket and he kept the target in reach with his stroke play but unfortunately the last single could not be achieved and Misbah was run out and the fate of the match changed all of sudden”, he said.

“It is always sad to suffer a defeat but in a way it had some lessons for us to lift the level of our game and put up a better performance in the coming matches against Australia and Sri Lanka or New Zealand”, he added.

When asked about the performance of the vice captain, Salman Butt, he said, the batsman off-coloured in the first two games and hopefully he would be out of bad patch soon to support the team.

“We cannot determine the performance of a player based on showing in a couple of matches, we need to wait for a while as the tournament is not yet over”.

Shoaib Malik said the team had not been under pressure before the match.

The test all-rounder said the morale of the team was up for the next matches and players would be doing better.●