London - Pakistan cricket team head coach Mickey Arthur is confident that his team will win next three matches and qualify to the semi-finals of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.
“We are very firmly in the World Cup. We will win our next three games and will qualify for the semifinals of the mega event. I thought we got our bowling and batting spot on. Our problem is we have not put three disciplines together yet in any game,” Arthur said in the post-match conference.
“I know we can beat New Zealand,” Arthur said after Sunday’s match. “It’s amazing what a difference a week makes. Our boys hurt this week, all of us hurt, incredibly. Guys didn’t sleep much, but they came to the training every day and put in, in order to try and turn it around, and today we got some just reward.”
“We are alive and kicking, without a doubt, and we play our best game, we beat anybody. Whether that’s New Zealand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, our remaining games, or England, we showed. We put our three disciplines together, we are as good as any team in this competition,” he said.
Pakistan had played six games in their World Cup campaign so far and only won two matches, against England and South Africa. They stand at the sixth spot in the tournament standings with five points. Only the top four teams of the table will qualify for the semi-final.
After losing to their arch-rival India in the last game, Pakistani team was slammed heavily by their supporters worldwide as they never defeated them in the World Cup history. “The guys were incredibly hurt. Hopefully, we got a proper reaction from them today that can just shut some people up for a little while,” Arthur added.
Arthur was in all praise for batsman Haris Sohail and slammed a journalist, who raised questions on Pakistani cricketer who played a fine knock of 89 against South Africa. He questioned Sohail’s slow batting in the last few overs of Pakistan innings, saying that he looked exhausted during the death overs and the team could score only 20 runs off the last three overs.
Listening to the question, Arthur was quick to defend Sohail, who had scored 89 runs from 59 deliveries and played an important role to take Pakistan to a 300-plus score. Arther mentioned that Sohail’s knock was one of the all-time best he has seen and urged the reporter to write something positive for a change.