‘India were better than us,’ says Pakistan head coach Mike Hesson
A year ago, Suryakumar Yadav, then India’s T20I captain, spoke about why India-Pakistan was no longer a “rivalry”. Once a great on-field contest between the two subcontinental giants, India have now stolen a march on their arch-rivals.
In Tests, while India are currently fourth, Pakistan have slipped to ninth, just above Zimbabwe, in the ICC rankings. In ODIs, the difference is No. 1 and No. 5, while in T20Is, India are first and Pakistan sixth.
No wonder, then, that ahead of the Pakistan team’s departure for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, head coach Mike Hesson admitted India’s superiority. The season of upheaval in Pakistan cricket has seen Hesson take charge of the red-ball squad as well, in the middle of a forgettable Test series in England.
Cricket at the Asian Games will be played in the T20 format, and Hesson, the New Zealander, defended the team’s performances under his charge.
“Obviously, the Test team is struggling,” he told reporters in Karachi on Wednesday, on the eve of the squad’s departure. “We are well aware of that. From the T20I perspective, the performance in the last 15 months, we are third or fourth in terms of win percentage. To suggest that T20I performance is low is not correct.”
Then came the acceptance that matching India’s standards remains a bridge too far.
“We have lost to India on multiple occasions and that is the benchmark for all the cricket fans,” he said. “We were eighth in the world in T20I cricket and now we are fifth, and we have done that by winning series, not only in Pakistan but also elsewhere. So it is not fair to put all three formats together.”
Hesson cited the Asia Cup as an example of Pakistan’s progress. At the same time, he admitted that the team was not good enough to get the better of India.
“Let’s deal with facts,” he said. “Up until the Asia Cup last year, Pakistan had not even made it to the quarter-finals in the last three events. In the Asia Cup, we won every game except against India and made it to the final, and lost to India. They were better than us.”
Hesson also spoke about the T20 World Cup and once again lamented losing to India.
“In the T20I World Cup, once again we had not qualified for the quarter-finals,” the head coach noted. “We reached the quarter-finals this time and lost to England by about two balls. We had rain against New Zealand and we couldn’t do anything. We lost to India, but outside that we won every game.”
Hesson called for patience and stressed the importance of following the process.
“Obviously, our expectations for Pakistan should be very high, but we also can’t go from not even making the top eight to expecting to win every game. There is a process we need to take to do that.”
Pakistan begin their campaign at the Asian Games on September 28, the same day India play their opener.
The post ‘India were better than us,’ says Pakistan head coach Mike Hesson appeared first on Sports News Portal | Revsportz.
Comments
Post a Comment