Pakistan cricket team’s head coach Saqlain Mushtaq has rubbished the idea that England was superior to Pakistan in the recently concluded three-test match series between the two sides.
His comments come merely hours after the visitors completed a historic-first whitewash of Pakistan at home.
“If you look at 3-0, it’ll be shocking. But if you decode it session by session, Pakistan played great cricket”.
“The first two matches we could have won. There wasn’t a huge gulf between these two sides. If we’d taken the lead we could have won. The second Test hurt me, but we have to respect the umpire’s decision, even though the whole world recognised that was not a catch.”
“The catch” he is referring to is Saud Shakeel’s dismissal in the second test with Pakistan crawling towards an unlikely win. With the ball looking to have touched the ground, Umpire Joel Wilson decided to give him out as England went on to win the close Test by 26 runs.
The former off-spinner also blamed his side’s “inexperience” as one of the factors for their losses.
“Three-nil hurts. I would also like to go hide in a corner and cry, but if you look at the bigger picture, they had a lot more experience than us”.
“These are not excuses, but experience guides you in key situations, especially in long-form cricket. When you don’t have experience, you become stuck somewhere”.
Before he was done, Saqlain Mushtaq offered another reason why Pakistan was awful against England.
“Our last Tests were against Sri Lanka, and we suddenly come into this series from loads of ODI and T20I cricket. You can’t change things all of a sudden.”
Despite Saqlain claiming otherwise, everything he says sounds like an excuse and a failure to accept their shortcomings. Pakistan was thoroughly outplayed at home and instead of taking responsibility the entire management is looking to divert the blame.
Perhaps it is in the best interest of everyone that a new regime is about to take hold of the Pakistan Cricket Board which may change things.
