Pakistan coach Grant Bradburn feels that his players have been unable to cop up with the conditions on offer in India for the ODI World Cup 2023 with a majority of them on their first ever tour of the country.
Only two players in the Pakistan’s 15-man squad for the competition have played in India before. Mohammad Nawaz was part of their 2016 world cup team while Agha Salman was in India for the now defunct Champions League T20.
“This tournament is on foreign conditions for us. None of our players have played here before. Every venue is a new one, including this one,” Bradburn told reports on Monday.
“We’ve done our homework meticulously on our opposition, on our venues that we’re playing at, and we’re prepared very, very well for each and every encounter. But the reality is that each and every venue is a new one for us and we don’t feel disadvantaged at all in terms of the knowledge, the quality, the skill, the backing that we have for this team of cricketers,” he added.
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Pakistan defeated Netherlands and Sri Lanka to begin their world cup campaign on a positive note before crashing to four defeats in a row.
“We are in a position that we didn’t want to be. We are determined at this stage of the tournament to be in control of our destiny but we’re not. That hurts the group,” Bradburn said.
Bradburn was elevated to the head coach in May this year after working as their fielding coach and then as consultant.
“Ideally, preparation for a tournament like this starts four years ahead. We started six months ago and changed direction in the way that we want to play the game of cricket, especially the one-day brand,” Bradburn said.
“We’ve shown some positive signs of that over the last six months. We’re proud of some of the performances that we’ve put on. It’s taking a little bit longer than we hoped, but we want to play a dynamic brand that matches the challenge of the conditions we’re playing in,” he added.
Bradburn doesn’t agree with Pakistan being labelled with the tournament favourites tag.
“I’m not sure where you get favourites from because there are 10 teams in this tournament, there’s 150 cricketers who are the best on the planet,” he said.
Pakistan were the top-ranked ODI side in the world briefly before slipping to the third spot.
Bradburn says the rankings are ‘skewed’ since Pakistan doesn’t get to play in India and other top cricket teams haven’t toured the country of late as well.
“In terms of the ICC rankings, we know they are skewed because we don’t get to play India, we don’t get to play a lot of the top nations who haven’t been to Pakistan of late,” he said.
“But we’re realistic. We have not been the best in the world as yet, so which highlights where we are in this tournament right now. We have no divine right to beat anyone in this tournament,” he added.
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