Pakistan skipper Babar Azam and his deputy Mohammad Rizwan believe that their team is making progress from the ODI series debacle early this month against a second-string England side. The 31 run victory against a full-strength English side in the first T20I at Nottingham was a testament to that.
The Men in Green move to Headingley in Leeds for the second T20I with a hope to seal the series and the two leaders in Babar and Rizwan believe that they can do it.
“See mistakes happen, but as was visible we improved on all three aspects of the game and especially fielding. Only those teams progress which learn from their mistakes and as you can see we are putting in all the efforts to do so,” Babar said in a video uploaded by the Pakistan Cricket Board on their official Twitter handle.
“Hopefully, with God’s grace, we will carry this momentum and win the series in the next game,” added the 26-year-old skipper. Rizwan too seconded his skipper saying that all the players showed great form in the last game and the team would like them to carry it.
The duo added 150 for the first wicket at Trent Bridge and was one of the main reasons for Pakistan reaching its highest ever total in T20Is. Speaking about their second 150 partnership as a pair (they have also added 197 against South Africa), Babar, who scored 85 off just 49 balls said that the idea was to assess the conditions initially and then go for the big shots.
“Once we got the hang of its (wicket) behaviour, I took the charge as Raazi Bhai (Mohammad Rizwan) was initially struggling a bit. We decided to take it 8-10 runs per over and make a big partnership so that it gets easier for the guys coming in,” he said.
Rizwan, agreeing to it says that in their partnerships, “Whenever one of us decides to go for power hitting, we discuss it among ourselves first.”
Talking about the communication in the middle between the two, Babar got a bit cheeky saying, “See the communication is such that we don’t even call sometimes, a simple glance is indicative enough to go for the run.”
The second game in Leeds would be a day game on Sunday, July 18.