Abdullah719
T20I Captain
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2013
- Runs
- 44,825
Inzamam-ul-Haq on Pakistan’s loss to England in the first Test:
“England won a lost match, many congratulations to them. I don’t understand how Pakistan can lose a match from that position. Credit goes to Woakes and Buttler for playing those innings under pressure.
“England should have been dismissed for under 200. When you got the main batsman for 120 then there’s no reason to let them chase 275. Pakistan made many mistakes.
“When Woakes and Buttler were batting, the whole world knows that short bowling and bowling at their body is hard for them especially Woakes. There was one short ball where he barely survived. But they barely did this type of bowling to him. He scored off bowling that was far away from his body.
“I didn’t see variation in the Pakistan bowling. There has to be a different plan for each batsman. You can’t bowl in the same way to each batsmen, they have different strengths and weaknesses. Our plan was to bowl line and length to all their batsmen. I was shocked to see that their weak areas weren’t targeted and there was no short bowling.
“We already gave England an opportunity yesterday after taking a lead of 107. We should have attacked them but we missed that opportunity and allowed them to hope that they can win and they won because of that.
“Yasir bowled well but if look at his overall bowling then he was trying to get batsmen out on every ball which is why he also went for 100 runs. When you try too hard to take wickets then you go for runs. If you have a bit of patience and you bowl at the same line then it makes the batsmen make mistakes.
“Pakistan performed well in this match previously but when they performed badly then we also have to look at what went wrong. If we look at the pacers, we look at Abbas and even though he bowled well with good line and length, the batsmen were easily managing him because he had started bowling at 125kph. When you’re bowling at a slow speed then even if you’re bowling in the right areas, it’s easy. In the first innings he wasn’t very fast either but he bowled at 130+. In this way, when the shine goes from the new ball then Abbas won’t be able to get batsmen out.
“England’s batting isn’t so big that they should be scoring 275 against Pakistan in the 4th innings. Even they couldn’t believe what they had achieved.
“In any innings, you will have a partnership. After England were 5 down and a partnership of 35 was formed, our body language became negative. We were thinking too far ahead.
“I still believe our team is very good. This Pakistan team is better than this England team. We should have won this Test and we should win the next Tests also. But when you are on the backfoot, your body language shouldn’t become so negative.
“I would like to tell the management that whenever there is a bad performance then you should make the players forget about it. They carried that third innings performance into Day 4.
“I think Pakistan can still win this series and can perform much better. But they need to have belief to do that and currently they don’t. England had the belief even when they were down. This was a very disappointing performance and the management has to lift the team. We lost a Test match we had won.”
“England won a lost match, many congratulations to them. I don’t understand how Pakistan can lose a match from that position. Credit goes to Woakes and Buttler for playing those innings under pressure.
“England should have been dismissed for under 200. When you got the main batsman for 120 then there’s no reason to let them chase 275. Pakistan made many mistakes.
“When Woakes and Buttler were batting, the whole world knows that short bowling and bowling at their body is hard for them especially Woakes. There was one short ball where he barely survived. But they barely did this type of bowling to him. He scored off bowling that was far away from his body.
“I didn’t see variation in the Pakistan bowling. There has to be a different plan for each batsman. You can’t bowl in the same way to each batsmen, they have different strengths and weaknesses. Our plan was to bowl line and length to all their batsmen. I was shocked to see that their weak areas weren’t targeted and there was no short bowling.
“We already gave England an opportunity yesterday after taking a lead of 107. We should have attacked them but we missed that opportunity and allowed them to hope that they can win and they won because of that.
“Yasir bowled well but if look at his overall bowling then he was trying to get batsmen out on every ball which is why he also went for 100 runs. When you try too hard to take wickets then you go for runs. If you have a bit of patience and you bowl at the same line then it makes the batsmen make mistakes.
“Pakistan performed well in this match previously but when they performed badly then we also have to look at what went wrong. If we look at the pacers, we look at Abbas and even though he bowled well with good line and length, the batsmen were easily managing him because he had started bowling at 125kph. When you’re bowling at a slow speed then even if you’re bowling in the right areas, it’s easy. In the first innings he wasn’t very fast either but he bowled at 130+. In this way, when the shine goes from the new ball then Abbas won’t be able to get batsmen out.
“England’s batting isn’t so big that they should be scoring 275 against Pakistan in the 4th innings. Even they couldn’t believe what they had achieved.
“In any innings, you will have a partnership. After England were 5 down and a partnership of 35 was formed, our body language became negative. We were thinking too far ahead.
“I still believe our team is very good. This Pakistan team is better than this England team. We should have won this Test and we should win the next Tests also. But when you are on the backfoot, your body language shouldn’t become so negative.
“I would like to tell the management that whenever there is a bad performance then you should make the players forget about it. They carried that third innings performance into Day 4.
“I think Pakistan can still win this series and can perform much better. But they need to have belief to do that and currently they don’t. England had the belief even when they were down. This was a very disappointing performance and the management has to lift the team. We lost a Test match we had won.”
