“Need To Shift Another Gear Up”: West Indies Great’s Advice For Pakistan Ahead Of Their T20 World Cup Opener

Pakistan will be opening their T20 World Cup 2024 campaign against co-hosts USA on Thursday in Texas. The 2022-runners-up will be coming to this clash after facing 2-0 defeat against England in a recently-concluded T20I series. Despite having a horrible outing against England, Babar Azam and co are strong contenders for the T20 World Cup title. However, West Indies great Ian Bishop has issued an advice for the 2009 champions that they should “change template”, in order to redeem their performance.

During the series against England, Pakistan promoted young batter Saim Ayub as an opener, alongside Mohammad Rizwan. Bishop stated that instead of going with the regular pair of Babar and Rizwan, Pakistan should back youngsters as their openers.

“If you’re asking me what I want versus what will happen to Pakistan, I will tell you that I need and hope that down the road, I don’t know if it’s immediate but down the road guys like Saim Ayub, I know Mohammad Harris is not in the reckoning right now, but he’s another young man. They’ve left back at home that I think until for T-20 cricket. But these guys are still very young and living the way,” Bishop said on Star Sports.

“So, the experience of Babar and Rizwan, they probably will go back there. But again, that’s a template that needs to change with those two players who I think from what we’ve seen T20 cricket going to even in a World Cup of challenging pitches, they need to shift another gear up in the way they approach their batting,” he further added.

Apart from this,Pakistan wicketkeeper-batter Azam Khan has been on the receiving end of some criticism from fans and former players amid his poor show in the recently-concluded T20I series against England.

Azam scored just 11 runs in the two matches that he played, while his glove-work was also questionable as he dropped a few easy catches.

After USA, Pakistan will be going up against their arch-rivals India for their next Group A match on Sunday in New York.