Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur slammed his team’s performance and said they had been given a “reality check” after India handed them a 124-run humbling in the Champions Trophy in Edgbaston on Sunday.
“We were below par. It’s as simple as that,” said the South African coach. “And it’s a reality check of where we are in our one-day cricket at the moment.”
Arthur lamented that the team were doing the simple things wrong: “The worrying thing for me, and it has been for a period of time, is we just do the basics wrong. We do the simple things wrong. We drop simple catches. We don’t run well enough between wickets.”
He added, “We don’t hit the keeper with our throws. We don’t understand when to bowl our variations. We bowled a really good over and then we bowled a variation in our sixth ball and that’s the ball that ended up going for a boundary.”
Despite the criticism, Arthur stuck by his team and said they were getting better. “If you have a look at our records over the last year we’ve won two series. We’ve got ourselves from No 9 to No 8 in the rankings and our brand of cricket has changed,” he said.
And he remained remarkably optimistic about what impact this kind of dispiriting loss could have on Pakistani cricket’s fortunes.
“When we put a performance in like that we answer a lot of questions, and a lot of things become clearer for us in terms of how we take this team forward.”
The coach also took the blame for the inclusion of Wahab Riaz who had a horror show and left the field without completing his quota.
“Wahab Riaz was fully fit. He went through a fitness test; he was declared fully fit. He performed poorly today. But he had a role to play. And I’ll take the blame, me, I’ll take it. I selected him. I selected him because I wanted him to perform a role. He didn’t execute that role, unfortunately,” said Arthur.