Disheartened Pak coach backs his team for future tours

Pakistan head Coach Mickey Arthur is extremely disappointed with his team's performance after getting whitewashed by South Africa in the recently-concluded Test series. The coach, however, backed his side for future tours.

Arthur said that he is pretty clear about the way forward for the squad and has now got a better idea about the right team combination.

"We start our next Test series in September, and everybody goes into white-ball mode now. We're certainly a far better white-ball team at the minute than we are a Test unit, but we'll get there," ICC quoted Arthur, as saying.

"We've realized the brand we want to play. We've had a look at personnel, at who's going to fit in going forward. So I'm pretty clear on the way to go, and certainly come September, when the Test championship starts, we've certainly got a team that can play in all conditions, and we need to identify what those skill sets are," he added.

 

On Monday, Pakistan lost the third and final test match against South Africa by 107 runs. The visitors were continuously let down by their batting on the tour.

Shan Masood and Babar Azam scored maximum runs for Pakistan. Masood was the highest run scorer for Pakistan with a total of 228 runs in three Test matches.

Pakistan batting unit got tainted by African pace attack and their ability to play short pitched ball get exposed in this series.

Arthur credited South Africa's bowlers for the result adding that Pakistan also had their moments in the series but could not capitalise well on them.

"We had our moments and we didn't take them. That's disappointing, but saying that, South Africa were outstanding. Particularly their bowling. The bowling just kept coming and coming at us, and the one thing that was always going to be tested was our young batting group," the coach said.

While talking about his batsmen, Arthur said, "I thought Babar Azam was outstanding. I think he's taken his cricket to another level. The question marks that were always around Babar will certainly disappear now. I thought the way he'd played this series was amazing and he'll just go from strength to strength now. I thought Shan Masood played exceptionally well at the top of the order and at three."

"Asad Shafiq played two innings that were significant and everybody else chipped in along the way. We didn't get enough runs clearly, but saying that, the 430 at Newlands was probably just too many from a very good bowling unit. We've got some work to do particularly in these conditions," he added.

Pakistan and South Africa are slated to play a three-match ODI series beginning January 19 at the St. George's Park stadium.