Lahore Qalandars head Aqib Javed said fast bowling is main strength of their team this season that will give them edge over other teams.
Addressing a press conference ahead of their match against Multan Sultans on Friday, Aqib said trio of Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf and Usman Shinwari gave them edge in fast bowling department and would shape up the way forward for their team in the PSL V.
“We remained unfortunate last season as we lost a lot of players to injury. This time we hope to get an injury free tournament but you cannot control the natural factors.”
Another area of concern for Qalandars has remained failure of middle-order batting and Aqib said they have given special focus to this area to avoid batting collapses witnessed in the previous editions.
“We have tried to address this problem and we have selected such players so that we can extend our batting number to 8. David Wiese and Samit Patil gave us that flexibility to not only strengthen our middle but also boost up our lower order as well.”
He said Gaddafi Stadium’s pith was unpredictable and they did not have that kind of home ground advantage as they have little experience to play at the Gaddafi Stadium. He hoped that the curators would have done a better job this time as the pitches were highly criticised during Bangladesh series.
He said if the pitch got improved then 165-170 would be par score during the match.
Aqib said he does not mind criticism and believe in the performances and if a player or team performs well no one will criticise.
He said a coach remains at the mercy of his players as he can devise a strategy, work with them and prepare them for the match day but in the end it is a player who has to perform in the field and his success would translate into a coach’s success.
About giving captaincy to Sohail Akhtar, Aqib said this season the franchise has taken some bold decisions to turn around the fortunes of the team.
Aqib said instead of going after big names, this time Qalandars have focused on performances and want to deliver in the field. Aqib said Akhtar was a product of Qalandars whom they brought back to the cricketing fold from the oblivion and he remains whole year with the Qalandars players.
“If we select some top captain in the world, he would not know the strengths of the local players. Qalandars have a greater pool of players that have come into the fold through own development programme and an outsider could not know about their strengths and weaknesses and how to utilise them. In Akhtar, we have developed their own captain who can handle the international and local players as per their strengths in a better way.”
About unfortunate incident of corruption in cricket with latest incident reported against Umar Akmal, Aqib said his own presence was enough to keep his players away from this menace. He said he was always behind all the corruption cases reported so far and have zero tolerance policy for the corruption in the cricket. Aqib said he would know much earlier than any anti-corruption unit if such activity happens and his players know this fact very well and that’s enough for them to stay away from such activities.