Windies mull plan to counter Pak rookies

KARACHI: When Pakistan drafted teenage leggie Shadab Khan in their touring party for the Twenty20 International series against the West Indies, the idea was to use him as a surprise weapon against the hosts.

It clicked when the youngster made a memorable debut in Bridgetown on Sunday with 3-7, the most economical figures in the history of T20I cricket in a complete four-over spell.

The West Indians were completely bamboozled as Pakistan romped to a six-wicket triumph. Later, West Indies all-rounder Jason Holder conceded that the hosts will have to come out with a better plan to counter Pakistan’s potent bowling attack.

Shadab did a lot of the damage as the home team was kept to 111 for 8 in Barbados, a total Pakistan chased down with 17 balls and six wickets to spare. Going into the rest of the series, Holder said West Indies would need to come up with plans to counter the new faces they are up against, especially the spinners.

“We need to just sit down and work out our plans against all their bowlers,” he said. “Obviously we are coming up against some guys who we have never played. In this situation, we need to find how best to play them given the conditions that we have.

“We struggled with their slow bowlers, and it’s a situation where we need to counteract their slow bowlers in the middle. Those were the guys who really put the strangle on us up front.”

Holder added that while the pitch was slow, it was not to blame for West Indies’ score; that was down to the early run-out of Evin Lewis and the repeated loss of wickets at “crucial stages”.

“I felt that the wicket we had today was slow, it was a little bit more difficult to hit on. It broke up a little earlier than I thought it would, but bearing that in mind, we just needed to find ways to knock some balls back down the pitch. It was a good enough pitch for us to get 150 at least. Definitely think if we had 150 on the board it would’ve been a much better game.

“It’s clear we didn’t bat well. We started off with a run-out, which gave them momentum. It was a very good piece of fielding, but we never really recovered from there. It was a situation in the middle where we had to consolidate, build a partnership.

“We tried to do that with Sunil [Narine] and [Kieron] Pollard, probably our last recognised partnership, and Carlos [Brathwaite] came in and joined Pollard and played a good knock, but we were always struggling with wickets. We lost wickets at crucial stages and we could never lay a platform from where we could blast.”

Sarfraz Ahmed, meanwhile, declared that his team will continue its winning ways in the coming matches.

“There is no letting up from here,” was the Pakistan captain’s definitive statement after the win that makes him just the third captain to commence his tenure at the helm in T20 internationals with five consecutive wins after compatriot Misbah-ul-Haq and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara.