Former batting greats can help Pakistan team: Saqlain

Former Pakistan spinner Saqlain Mushtaq says the cricket authorities must seek help of former greats to find solutions for the batting woes, afflicting the national team.

“I would suggest to the Board to use the services of our batting greats like Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Muhammad Yousuf to resolve the problems we are facing in our batting department,” Saqlain said after Pakistan’s ouster from Asia Cup.

“We are losing matches because our batting is just not doing enough. We have quality bowlers but they also need something to bowl with. There is no consistency in our batting in limited over cricket. And we need to look at this seriously,” he added.

“I think our own batting greats can do a lot to help the batsmen in the national team and even those coming up in domestic cricket. The PCB must ask these batting greats to use their experience to help the national team players and also work with batsmen at the domestic, junior and academy levels,” Saqlain said.

The PCB has hired former Zimbabwean batsman, Grant Flower as their batting coach since 2014 but in ODIs and T20 cricket the national team batsmen have just failed to perform consistently.

Saqlain, who took 208 Test and 288 ODI wickets in an illustrious career, said Pakistan’s own players would be able to communicate easily with the players.

Miandad and Inzamam have had very short stints with the Pakistan team players in training camps in the recent past while the former remained head coach for two terms.

Yousuf has made it clear he will not accept any offer from the current set up unless things change for the better.