Perth: Pakistan skipper Misbah-ul-Haq feels familiarity with UAE team members will help them plan better when they meet in a crucial Group B tie in the World Cup on Wednesday.
Misbah, who even knows most of the UAE players by name, said: “We know most of their players as they have been playing with our players in Dubai. Most of our players have also played in league games there and their domestic tournaments. So we have to plan against each other.”
When asked about the UAE’s role in Pakistan cricket ever since the Gulf country started acting as their ‘home’ venue, Misbah said: “UAE is really important for us because whatever we did in the last four years, I think UAE played a wider role in Pakistan’s cricket. We just achieved so many things there, whitewashed England and Australia in Test matches there. We won against Sri Lanka also there. We played most of our cricket in UAE, so you could say that UAE is home for us.”
Misbah is not willing to take any team, including UAE, easily as he believes that anything can happen. “Anything can happen and every game is important in this pool, no matter who is playing today and who is playing tomorrow and whom you are playing against. Mainly you could see that all the teams are still interested, and that’s really interesting for us also. But we have to focus on just going there, improve our performance and try to win the games, and I think that’s the simplest way we have to just think.”
Expanding on the nature of his sport, Misbah said: “Cricket is a game of uncertainties. Sometimes you’ve got four, five poor innings and suddenly you get a hundred. It’s like that and our batsmen are capable of hitting centuries. We are looking forward to just giving them a lot of confidence and they are practicing, working hard in the net. All that I can do is just give them confidence and ask them to be positive all the time. I tell them that whenever you just go there, it’s a new innings, it’s a new game, so think about what you are playing at the moment.”
When asked whether he does keep drilling to his players that Pakistan was in a similar state in 1992 and went on to win the World Cup, Misbah said: “We take some of the motivation from that incident but what is important for us now is that we just have to play well — and that’s the simple scenario for us. Don’t just fall into 1992 mode saying that we did it, so we’re going to do it again. We have to win if we want to go into the next round.
“We have to really perform even tomorrow and then against South Africa and then against Ireland. These are very important games for us. If we are unable to perform in one game, we could be out of this tournament.”
