On Tuesday night, he kept gesturing helplessly as his team
flopped miserably both with the bat and the ball to hand New Zealand a 110-run
triumph here at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium.
An
aggressive man, his natural instinct almost prompted him to give his erratic
wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal a dressing down along with the experienced pace duo
of Shoaib Akhtar and Abdul Razzaq, who gave a terrible performance in the death
overs.
But
age together with the burden of captaincy has certainly mellowed him down.
“We
are worried because the team hasn’t played well in the last two matches. But I
believe that now is not the time to take on the players,” he told Arab News.
“It’s
true that we played poorly against New Zealand but what’s happened has
happened. It might backfire if I start scolding the players. The right thing to
do, I believe, is to talk to the players and give them confidence and that’s
what I plan to do,” stressed the senior all-rounder.
Afridi,
31, plans to use Pakistan’s five-day rest ahead of the match against Zimbabwe
to rally his team in a bid to ensure that they win convincingly against the
African side ahead of their last Pool A game against Australia on March 19 in
Colombo.
“We
can’t panic,” he said. “We have five days to regroup and we have to make it
sure that we make good use of this break.” Afridi
said that Pakistan need a forceful showing against Zimbabwe to regain their
confidence. “The thing is that when the team is winning, everything seems fine.
But a few bad results can change all that. We have to make it sure that the
boys don’t drift apart and to do that we have to win our next match in a
convincing manner.”
Commenting on the defeat
against New Zealand, Afridi admitted that Kamran’s poor wicketkeeping cost
Pakistan the match. “He (Kamran) dropped Ross Taylor twice when he had just
arrived at the crease and those mistakes proved to be too costly for us.” But the seasoned all-rounder was quick to
add that Kamran was not the only one responsible for the loss. “Our bowlers
performed poorly in the last ten overs. There was some reverse swing but Shoaib
and Razzaq bowled too many full tosses to allow New Zealand to take the game
away from us.”
He also lamented the fact
that openers Mohammad Hafeez and Ahmed Shehzad are going through a lean patch.
“The lack of form shown by the openers is worrying us now and we have to find a
way to fix this problem.”
Afridi didn’t
rule out the option of bringing in Asad Shafiq as an opener in the match
against Zimbabwe on March 14. “It’s certainly an option for us,” he said.
Though
Afridi refused to entirely blame Kamran Akmal for Tuesday’s defeat, he conceded
that the wicketkeeper’s unreliability behind the stumps is posing a headache
for the team. “Of course it bothers us when the ‘keeper drops sitters,” he said.
When
asked whether Pakistan would consider the option of playing Umar Akmal,
Kamran’s younger brother, as their wicketkeeper, Afridi said, “Anything is possible
because we are keeping all our options open.” After two bad days in the field, Afridi is hoping that his team
will find its way back on the right track. “The last two games should serve as
a timely wake-up call for us,” he said. “After the game against Zimbabwe, we
have a tough match against Australia and then the knockout stage. Things will
get tougher for us and the only way to deal with it is to start playing at our
best. I'm sure we will bounce back.”
