Mohammad Rizwan knows that Pakistan is almost out of the Champions Trophy after losing to India by six wickets in Dubai. This comes after they lost to New Zealand by 60 runs in the first game.
The reigning champions only have one game left, which is against Bangladesh. Other teams in their group need to lose in order for them to make it to the last four. A lot of the time, Pakistan has been in that situation in recent events, and Rizwan doesn’t like it.
“For now, we can say it’s over,” Rizwan said when the game was over. “That’s the truth.” First, we’ll see what Bangladesh does with New Zealand. Then, we’ll see what New Zealand does with India. There are a lot of teams to beat, and the road is long.
As captain, I don’t like having to rely on other people.” Win and keep things in your hands to show that you are good enough.
When I’m waiting for other teams, I don’t want to think about how they did. It’s important that India and New Zealand beat us. We didn’t play well, and they did. If we can sneak through, that’s fine with us.
Rizwan agreed that the team would have to answer tough questions about how they played here. If New Zealand beats Bangladesh in Rawalpindi on Monday, they are out of the tournament for sure. This is the third straight ICC white-ball event that they have been eliminated before the knockouts.
After becoming captain late last year, Rizwan led the team to wins in both Australia and South Africa in ODI series. He was upset that his team was making the same mistakes that cost them in their most recent losses, in a tri-series against New Zealand and South Africa and then in their first game here.
Give him Pakistan and he will come back in form with a match winning 100. #Kohli pic.twitter.com/6eGq048PmF
— Shoaib Akhtar (@shoaib100mph) February 23, 2025
His 46 off of 77 balls today will be looked at closely, just like Babar Azam’s 46 off of 77 balls in the first loss. It was much slower until it picked up speed late in the game. His wicket was one of three quick ones in the middle that took away any momentum Pakistan had built.
“When you lose, you’re obviously disappointed and it’s a difficult time, difficult questions come up,” he added. We messed up in all three areas, which is why we lost today.
We set a goal of 270 to 280 for this in our team meeting yesterday because the outfield and pitch were slow.” Things might have turned out differently if we had gotten 280.
When Saud Shakeel and I first started working together, it took a while, but after that, we chose our shots badly. So, they had a chance to get wickets and put stress on our middle order. They built on top of it, and we couldn’t get back on our feet.
“We made the same mistakes we’ve been making before.” This is an old mistake. In the last four games, we’ve been making them. We work on them, but mistakes happen because we and our players are people. We’re working on those and making an effort to fix them.
I think India worked harder and was stronger than we were. In this way, they reached the goal. The reason we did bad things was maybe because we weren’t strong enough when we needed to be.
In the field, we needed to be more energetic, but maybe we weren’t having enough of that, which is why we made mistakes.
In a way, Pakistan’s batting problems had been made worse twice before the event even started. When Saim Ayub broke his ankle, they lost a young, modern, and in-form opener. Then, two balls into their first game, they lost Fakhar Zaman, another opener who could get things going quickly.
Rizwan was sad about losing both of them, especially Ayub, who could also bowl spin. It meant that Pakistan had to rely on Imam-ul-Haq, an opening with very different skills, for this game.
In the same way, the fact that there is only one specialist spinner in the team (Abrar Ahmed) has been called into question during the tri-series and the two games in this event. But Rizwan said they couldn’t have brought in another expert, even though Abrar was their best bowler in both games.
“You can’t have five real bowlers in ODIs.” Sharmeen Afridi, Abrar, Haris Rauf, and Naseem Shah. On the fifth, you can see that India has Jadeja and Patel and New Zealand has Santner and Bracewell. The people who chose them were the best we had, and they chose Salman Agha and Khushdil Shah.
We can’t make a mix with five bowlers and six batters if we choose to bring in two real spinners. Of course, having another spinner will be talked about, but you can’t play an ODI with five real bowlers. “Perhaps in a Twenty20.”
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