LAHORE: While expressing full confidence in his Test team, head coach Waqar Younis on Monday acknowledged the ODI squad due to loss of several key campaigners was currently not very strong, but sounded optimistic that Pakistan would qualify for the 2017 Champions Trophy.

“We should understand that our team had been facing a drawback due to the absence of some great bowlers like Saeed Ajmal, unfit Mohammad Irfan and Mohammad Hafeez for the last one year,” said Waqar, while addressing a crowded news conference before the national squad left for the tour of Sri Lanka late on Monday night.

“Yes we are playing good Test cricket but the team in ODI is not as strong as the Test squad,” the head coach reckoned.

But he was quick to add: “But I am not saying the ODI team is weak.

“In the Test team, experienced campaigners like Misbah-ul-Haq, Younis Khan, Hafeez and Azhar Ali are performing well, and I believe our main strength in Test cricket is our batting,” Waqar underlined.

“[Whereas] in ODIs, recently we lost to Bangladesh badly and the way we beat Zimbabwe at home was also not convincing. In ODIs, we tested some promising players like Babar Azam and Imad Wasim while Hammad Azam also got a chance.

“Still it will take time for us to prepare a bowler like Ajmal, who in the last three, four years had been our match-winner,” the coach said.

Squad leaves for Sri Lanka

“As far as qualifying for the Champions Trophy is concerned, we have to win three ODIs in Sri Lanka and I hope we will win more than three,” the coach said.

Pakistan in Sri Lanka feature in a three-Test series, and then play five-game ODI series followed by two T20s.

The tourists open the Sri Lanka tour with a three-day warm-up in Colombo from June 11 before the first Test begins in Galle on June 17.

On whether Pakistan (still without Ajmal) would overcome the challenge of qualifying for the Champions Trophy, Waqar hoped his team would achieve the target as two seasoned Sri Lankan cricketers — Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene — would no longer be playing in the ODIs.

“We tested youngsters against Zimbabwe to achieve the set goals and when you have to build a new team you have to take the risk and we did that,” Waqar said.

“However, the major shock to the [ODI] team is the loss of the bowler of Ajmal’s class. Though we have tested Imad, the void left by Ajmal’s absence certainly can’t be filled quickly,” he said, hinting it would take some time before Pakistan improved their performance in top ODI contests.

Waqar said hosting a series against Zimbabwe was a good omen for Pakistan’s domestic cricket, adding the crowd response during the series was also fantastic. “Hopefully, it will open further doors of international cricket to Pakistan, which is essential to groom upcoming players.

“Our team has been playing international cricket abroad for the last six years. Therefore, we could not produce many world-class bowlers during this period. Still, I think Irfan, Wahab Riaz and Rahat Ali are good hopes for us in pace department,” he said.

On whether some sort of pressure paved the way for Ahmed Shehzad’s return to international cricket whose not-up-to-the-mark discipline was termed as a reason for his ouster from the Test and ODI teams, Waqar said there was no attitude problem from any player.

“We rested some players as we wanted to test some [other] promising players, so he [Shehzad] was sidelined. Players come and go and it is a matter to understand. There is no attitude problem. Rather the team has started to gel and it will progress further,” Waqar said.

While during his last tenure as national coach, Waqar said, he had helped produce some quality fast bowlers, “I could not do the same in the current stint owing to injuries to a number of our bowlers”.

Asked instead of coaching the bowlers in Pakistan after the Zimbabwe series he went to his homeland (Australia), Waqar said: “I did not go to my homeland, but Australia, as Pakistan is my origin homeland. I went to my home and that is the right of every one.”

Responding to a question on the trend of pacers bowling pinpoint yorkers had virtually ended, Waqar, who along with Wasim Akram was lethal in delivering toe-crushing yorkers, said new laws on fielding restrictions, were not inspiring bowlers to bowl yorkers.

“Moreover, reverse swing has also disappeared, mainly because two balls are being used in an innings. And it is not possible to bowl reverse swing with newer balls.”

Commenting on dashing opener Mukhtar Ahmed who made his T20 debut in the recent home series against Zimbabwe, Waqar said the youngster could also play other formats, citing such players should be the part of every team to accelerate run-rate right from the start.

“The way cricket is being played setting a 300-plus target [or chasing it successfully] you need such players who can up the run-rate from the start. I think our selectors may well be eyeing Mukhtar [for other formats]. There may be some lacking in his technique, after overcoming that he can get selected for other formats,” Waqar said.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2015

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