Batters switch to attack mode

ADELAIDE, Australia: There were shouts of warning ending with a thud. A white cricket ball landed just a couple of yards from where a group of Pakistani journalists were sitting here at the picturesque St Peter’s College ground, writes Khalid Hussian.
It was Shahid Afridi who had hit a big shot in our direction from at least a hundred yards away. Then the missiles kept falling here and there. Now it wasn’t just Afridi as Sohaib Maqsood and Umar Akmal also started to show their big-hitting prowess as they started hitting freely all over the park.
It was the final quarter of a marathon, four-hour training session that the Pakistan team carried out here ahead of their last World Cup Pool B game against Ireland to be played here at Adelaide Oval on Sunday.
This was perhaps the first time that the Pakistani batters were told to hit all deliveries that were hurled at them in the nets.
“It’s just range hitting,” was the initial reaction of Grant Flower, Pakistan’s batting coach, when asked whether Pakistan were finally planning to switch to attack mode.
But he conceded that his batters were looking to test their big shots before they faced the Irish attack on a flat Adelaide Oval wicket on Sunday.
“Playing on a flat wicket in Adelaide against the Irish attack, the guys need to practice their big shots as well as working ones,” the former Zimbabwe Test cricketer told reporters.
“You need to hit boundaries because that’s the way the game is going,” he added.
Younis Khan, the former Pakistan captain, agreed with his batting coach.
“These days 300 is not a safe score anymore,” he said. “You have to score 350 or more to feel secure and to do that you need your batters to score big.”
Younis said that the team officials have given all batsmen a free hand to play their natural game.
“There is a free hand for everybody. You have to play your natural game. It can’t happen that I start playing like Shahid Afridi and he starts playing like me or Misbah,” he said.
Younis made it clear that Pakistan will have to master the art of calculated aggression.
“We have to play attacking cricket but that doesn’t mean that we become careless. In Auckland in the Australia-New Zealand match all batters were aggressive and they couldn’t even score 150.
“In the end you need at least one of your top order batters to score a big hundred. You need to keep wickets in hand and then an assault in the final overs can help you get to 350.”
The only time Pakistan have crossed the 300 mark as against minnows UAE on a batting wicket in Napier.