Pakistan to unleash barrage of pace on UAE

A hurt Pakistan are set to intimidate minnows United Arab Emirates with their four-pronged pace attack in a round robin league game of the Asia Cup Twenty20 cricket tournament, here tomorrow.

While Pakistan are a little hurt after losing to arch-rivals India by five wickets in a low-scoring encounter yesterday, it is expected that to be a cakewalk when Shahid Afridi’s boys take on the qualifiers in their second league encounter.

UAE’s problems against big teams have been their batting as they lost to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh despite restricting the two Test playing nations to scores of 129 or 133 respectively. UAE could manage 115 and 82 in these two matches.

Pakistan coach Waqar Younis believes that whenever his team bats first, they are more confident even though their batting collapsed against India last night.

“I believe if we can put 135 to 140 on board, we can win against any opposition with the kind of fast bowling attack we have. So the plan in coming matches will be to put as many runs possible on the board,” Waqar said after the India match.

The manner in which UAE batsmen played Lasith Malinga and Mustafizur Rahaman, who have lot of variations but probably are not fastest in world cricket, they will find it scary to face someone like Mohammed Amir, who can let it rip from ball one.

The pace and swing complemented by Mohammed Sami and Wahab Riaz, who effortlessly cranks it up to 150 kmph will make life difficult for UAE batsmen.

For UAE, the only silver lining is that they have former Pakistan fast bowler Aaqib Javed as its coach.

Only Aaqib can reveal a few tricks to play Amir and Co but at the end of the day, UAE need to have quality to fight it out which they have not been able to show in the past two matches.