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Pakistan team director Mickey Arthur has asked against a “witch-hunt” after their World Cup ambitions suffered a likely fatal blow against South Africa on Friday.
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Pakistan crashed to a one-wicket defeat versus the Proteas in Chennai, their fourth defeat in six games in India.
While mathematically possible, Pakistan’s fate of making the semi-finals is not entirely in their hands. They will have to win their remaining three matches and hope other results go their way.
“They’re going to be blaming everybody, don’t worry. It’s just the way of the world,” said Arthur.
“It’s really unfair to start a witch-hunt, certainly on (captain) Babar Azam, on ‘Inzi’ (chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq), on our coaches, on the management team.
“What I do know is the boys have tried and the effort of the coaching staff, the effort of the players has been first-class. If they would see the amount of effort that the players and staff put in, they would be amazed.”
Pakistan, ranked as World No 1 last month, had started the World Cup well with wins over Netherlands and Sri Lanka. But they’ve since suffered four straight defeats to India, Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa.
They made 270 runs with Saud Shakeel (52) and Babar Azam (50) among the runs before reducing South Africa from 206/4 to 250/8.
Things could have gone Pakistan’s way but for tailenders Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi to persist and take Proteas home and to the top of the points table.
Before Friday’s match, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had released a statement stressing it had allowed Azam and Inzamam all powers to select the World Cup squad.
Arthur admitted that the side has been below par in the tournament.
“Look I think at a World Cup you’ve got to be playing your best game at the right time,” said Arthur who took over earlier this year.
“Our form had sort of drifted off a little bit. And there’s various reasons. We talk about it every day as to what it could have been. But our form kind of drifted off. And again, we haven’t put the perfect games together.
“We’ve batted well, we haven’t bowled well. I do think our fielding standards have been average. So, there’s a lot of work that we need to put in and get to the standards required to win a World Cup.”
Arthur admitted Pakistan were short of a challenging total on Friday.
“I thought 300 was the par score but our bowlers had given us a real chance there and they’ve given it everything. It’s a really disappointed dressing room and our players, I know, we can be proud of tonight.”
Arthur said Pakistan showed fighting spirit against South Africa, something that was lacking in their surprise eight-wicket defeat to Afghanistan.
“Tonight was a totally different feeling in that dressing room to the Afghanistan game,” said Arthur.
“In the Afghanistan game, we were average in all departments. Tonight, we were okay with the bat, I thought we were very good with the ball.
“And tonight, I’m really proud of those players because they fought right to the bitter end.”
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