ISLAMABAD - Former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief selector Abdul Qadir has believed that Pakistan cricket team is superior to the West Indies and highly favourites to inflict whitewash in the three-match Test series in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Talking to The Nation on Monday, former legendry leg spinner Qadir said: “Firstly, Pakistan is playing at the UAE, which is a favourite hunting ground for the green caps and secondly, the West Indies is no match to Pakistan Test team, which is a complete package and very hard nut to crack for the world’s top Test playing nations especially at the UAE pitches.
“Pakistan batting is a complete and compact and has the likes of Azhar Ali, Sami Aslam, who are perfect Test openers and very hard to dismantle, while Younus, Babar Azam, Asad Shafiq and Misbah pose tremendous challenge for any given bowling attack. Unfortunately, Younus is out in the first Test as he is still recovering from sickness, but Babar Azam is perfect replacement as tailor-made one-down batsman. Babar is brimming with confidence after scoring three conservative tons in the One-Day Internationals, while Sarfraz offered Pakistan batting extra dimension as he enjoys his batting a great deal and he is more than capable of scoring quick runs and inflicting huge damages on the opposing teams,” he added.
Qadir said he couldn’t find a single Test playing nation, who had such liberty of having world’s most consistent batsmen coming one after another. “On the other hand, the West Indies were completely outclassed in T20 and ODIs. They can’t produce runs in shorter format of the game, how would it be possible for them to stand even outside chance against Pakistan deadly and most fearsome bowling attack. The West Indian batsmen just struggled to cope with Pakistani part-time bowlers, how they are going to survive against magician Yasir Shah, whom they had never played against.
“Yasir is a wicket-taker and always produces excellent performances even in English conditions. The UAE is a heaven for Yasir, and he is bound to destroy the West Indian batting like pack of cards,” he added.
Qadir said if there was some other word than unpredictable, he would use that for the West Indian team, as they just failed to score runs and kept on losing wickets at very meager scores. “It will be an uphill task for the West Indian batsmen to survive against Pakistani bowling attack especially against Yasir. If the selectors decides to enter the Test with two specialist spinners, Zulfiqar Babar is more than capable of causing lot of damages and pick up crucial wickets, while likes of Aamir, Wahab, Imran, Sohial and Rahat can rip through any given batting order. The West Indian batsmen required extraordinary efforts to stand any realistic chance of surviving against these world class bowlers.”
He said on the other hand, like batting, the West Indian bowling would depend heavily on Sunil Narine, but he didn’t think Narine would be more effective and cause too much trouble to Pakistani batting. “Pakistani batsmen use crease to the best of their abilities and Narine has to bowl very cleverly as he needs to keep batsmen in the crease and also stop them from scoring runs by launching all-out attack. If the West Indies decides to play with Devendra Bishoo, he will be ineffective as bowling at the West Indian wickets is different and the UAE conditions also don’t support bowlers like Bishoo.
“In my personal opinion and knowledge, Pakistan team has golden chance to inflict another whitewash, this time in the Test matches. Misbah is a highly successful and clever skipper and knows well how to play his cards. He will not let the West Indies off the hook and will go all-out attacking. I can easily say, Pakistan team is hot favourite to pile up more misery on struggling West Indian team,” Qadir concluded.
