We can beat England: Azhar Mahmood
Dubai: After Pakistan faced a 7-wicket defeat against West Indies, the team's bowling coach Azhar Mahmood is hoping to make a strong comeback in their second ICC Men's Cricket World Cup clash against the hosts, England, saying that they have the ability to overpower them.
"We can beat them. It's not an upset. We have the ability to beat them. We have the ability, we have the skills to do that, and hopefully, we can do it," ICC quoted Mahmood as saying.
Mahmood also cited their recent five-match ODI series against England, in which Pakistan lost all the four matches after the first match got abandoned, as a reference, saying that they were not that far behind the English side.
However, Mahmood did acknowledge the fact that their fielding was a concern and added that they have an "inexperienced" bowling line-up.
"If you see the one-day series, we were not that far from England. They scored 1430-odd (1424) runs, we scored 1370 (1356) runs, so we were 70 runs short. Unfortunately, our fielding was not up to the mark and we give extra bonus because we have an inexperienced bowling line-up," he said.
In June last year, England posted a mammoth total of 481 runs on the board, which is the highest ever ODI total by any team, against Australia. Referring to that record total, Mahmood said that to achieve such a ginormous total, a team has to play 300 balls and they only need 10 good balls to take 10 wickets.
"The 480 pitch has been a world record pitch, but they have to play 300 balls to get to that record, but we have to bowl 10 good balls to get 10 wickets," Mahmood said.
Although Mahmood said that they have an "inexperienced" bowling line-up, he also added that the bowlers have an ability to bowl at a pace of 140 plus.
"If you see the last game, at least we bowled a lot of short balls and we mixed that up, so definitely we can do that. We've got bowlers who can bowl 140 plus, so they can do the same thing to England batters," he said.
Pakistan is going to compete with England on June 3.