‘Rizwan only plays on leg side, he’ll be trapped’ claims Moin Khan

F.P. Report

KARACHI: Former Pakistan captain and wicketkeeper batter Moin Khan made a major assertion regarding Mohammad Rizwan and stated that he only favours to play on the leg side and will soon be trapped by the opposing teams.

Moin, while speaking on ARY News’ show Bouncer highlighted a weakness in the batting approach of wicketkeeper batter Rizwan and alleged that the latter is a one-dimensional batter and prefers to score on the on-side.

“If you look at the openers of world-class teams, their strike rates are above 130. So, I think Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan need to improvise their game and approach as they are now in dire need to ante their strike rate up,” said Moin.

“I think Babar is currently going through a rough form, no doubt on his capabilities, he is a wonderful player. Rizwan, on the other hand, plays on one side only and he needs to score on the other side as well or else he will be trapped,” Moin maintained.

The former Pakistan captain then also opined regarding the possibility of testing a new opening pair for T20Is and claimed a left-handed batter like Sharjeel Khan and Fakhar Zaman would be more productive.

“I said it earlier in the Asia Cup that a left-right combination should be made in the opening since Babar had been playing at the one-down position so he should have demoted himself and promoted Fakhar to the opening position,” said Moin.

“Such combination is very deadly as it also makes it harder for the bowlers to stick to their line and length. So, you have to take a chance, it is inevitable and if you don’t want to take such chances and want to play conventional cricket then you’ll remain a conventional and an average side forever,” he added.

Moin then further commented on the Pakistan cricket team’s middle-order voes and termed Khushdil Shah, Asif Ali, and Iftikhar Ahmed lucky for getting the backing despite having a below-par tournament.

“There is no doubt, changes could have been made to the current middle-order but as a former cricketer, I always support the team. So, I think we need to back them now,” said Moin.

“No doubt, our middle-order had a poor Asia Cup and they could have done better in the tournament but I think Khushdil, Asif, and other middle-order batters are lucky as they got the backing from the management after a poor tournament,” he added.

The former Pakistan captain then went on to highlight the flaws in the leading skills of current skipper Babar and stated that “it’s about time to improve his captaincy skills.”

“As we saw in the Asia Cup final that Pakistan lost the match after a dominating start, we should have adopted the attacking approach but we did not and lost the momentum. I wonder what was this support staff doing there if they could not pass on a message to Babar and told him to go for the kill,” said Moin.

“So, I think he is consistently making mistakes in the captaincy and we always think that he’ll learn things soon but he is not. It’s about time Babar. The world cup is nearing up and we do not have room for blunders now and if you still keep on making mistakes then I do not think we would be able to win it,” he concluded.