Leeds, Jul 24: Pakistan’s coach Waqar Younis has denied that his batsmen had been tainted by Twenty20 cricket with the exception of Umar Akmal.
“Definitely I would say that about Umar Akmal. I think he’s a little rash when it comes to Test-match cricket, maybe he’s just played too much Twenty20,” Waqar said.
“He’s very young, so he’s still learning. He’s no doubt a very talented cricketer, he’s got all the shots in the book, but he’s just got to learn quickly. Trying to control him - it sometimes gets hard. He is very young; it takes a bit of time, I guess,” he said.
In December 2009, Akmal, then 19, stunned Australia with 51 in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. The knock included three thumping boundaries and a six off a single Peter Siddle over. In his eight subsequent innings against Australia he has failed to reach 50, averaging 24.5, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Waqar said the biggest failing of his team’s first innings, rather than the manner of dismissals, was the inability to build any partnerships outside of the 80 compiled by openers Butt and Imran Farhat.
“We didn’t really get the partnership going apart from the top partnership and then the odd one in the middle as well. Thirty- or 40-odd, we didn’t really get the partnerships of 70 or 80 runs.
“It’s been lacking and it’s just because we have got pretty young players in the middle order. If you look at numbers three [Azhar Ali], four [Umar Amin] and even five [Umar Akmal], they’re very new in this [Test] arena, so I think we’ve got to give them a little bit of margin,” Waqar said."
Despite the inclusion of the more-experienced Shoaib Malik in the team for this match, Waqar said there were no plans to shift him up the order to bolster the experience of its top-order.