‘Tummies are visible, they can’t move’ – Misbah-ul-Haq’s brutal assessment of Pakistan’s fitness standards
Pakistan were handed a wake-up call in their first warm-up game against England where they put up poor performances in all departments and lost the match by six wickets. The likes of Shan Masood and Shadab Khan, Harris Rauf among others. Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan did not star in the game for Pakistan.
Pakistan could muster only 160 runs for the loss of 8 wickets in their 20 overs and in the chase, England blew them away with their big hitting and raced to the target in just 14.4 overs. Pakistan will face the number one ranked T20I side India in their first encounter at Melbourne. When it came to the current fitness levels of the Pakistani players, Misbah-ul-Haq was quick to voice out his concerns on the issue.
The star batter also added that the fitness level of Pakistan’s domestic players was inadequate. Misbah-ul- Haq was the head coach of the Pakistan Men’s cricket team from 2019-2021. “Clear cut, fitness issues are visible, Waqar left four times [as coach], and I left once. Players like myself, Shoaib Malik, and Younus Khan were quite into fitness, and we used to push ourselves. Those who push others out of their limitations are not considered good trainers nor good coaches,” former Pakistan captain Misbah was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan.
There has not been a single fitness test: Misbah
Their tummies are visible; their lower are heavy and they can’t move. The reason behind this is there has not been a single fitness test, there is no benchmark.” We used to have arguments that we used to say that the standard used for the international level must be used for the domestic level as well. The responsible people at the domestic level always opposed us related to fitness,” he added.
Pakistan played a warm-up game against Afghanistan on October 19, Wednesday. They fared well to skittle Afghanistan down to 154-6 in their 20 overs. Shaheen Afridi and Harris Rauf had good outings as they both picked up 2-29 and 2-34 in their four-over spell. At the time of writing Pakistan’s current score is 19-0 in 2.2 overs.
