Aqib rues Lahore’s careless approach

Monitoring Desk

DUBAI: Head coach of Pakistan Super League (PSL) franchise Lahore Qalandars, Aqib Javed, after watching his team losing five straight matches in the same manner, says he has never seen a team consistently failing like this in his 30-year career.

Qalandars, who began their innings in a dominating manner against Peshawar Zalmi in their fifth match of PSL, lost the match by 10 wickets the worst defeat of the third edition.

“The team has made a habit of performing like this [losing wickets carelessly],” said Aqib while talking to media. “They’ve done this in all five matches. During the match against Peshawar, when our batting started to collapse, I was thinking that I have never seen any team failing in the same pattern again and again.”

He continued by blaming the batsmen for not taking the responsibility of playing longer innings. “You have seven batsmen in the team and you expect that at least in one match, there will be one batsman who will go there and stay till the end, or just score some good runs,” he said. “All we needed was one batsman scoring 70 and staying till the end, but here we have seen consistent failure.”

Aqib also criticised the batsmen for not following the plan laid out for them before the match. “When you have professionals in your team, you expect them to go and play according to the plan. Here, not a single batsman is able to execute the plan. We have big names like Brendon McCullum, Fakhar Zaman, Umar Akmal, Denesh Ramdin and others who have much experience but are still failing,” he said.

However, the former Pakistan pacer had hope of watching a comeback from the team. “Players who are not learning from their mistakes and repeating them every time can never win. If the team works on their weak areas and executes the plan then we can stage a comeback in the next match,” he concluded.