It was one of those days when Pakistan’s iconic batting collapses, that people have been so apt to seeing was on display as the men in green’s batting lineup made a meal of a simple chase of 119 in 20 overs to lose the game by a huge margin of 19 runs.
Skipper Babar Azam who top-scored with 41 was distraught with the poor batting performance of the team. "It's a very painful performance. In South Africa, we had chased down 200; similarly here, we should have won this game comfortably,” Babar said in the post-match press conference. “But unfortunately, we played poor cricket and continued to struggle in the middle order,” he added.
Saying that it was not one particular order of the batting that failed, rather the entire batting order was at fault, Babar promised to come back strong in the next game. "Today, it was not just the middle order but our batsmen right through couldn't perform the way we expect them to. It was a collective collapse and we lost as a group,” he said.
Stressing on the fact that the World T20 was approaching, the 25-year-old said that the team cannot afford to lose focus like that. "As a professional, you adapt to every condition but I think we as openers didn't give a good start from the top and then our middle order was struggling to step up,” he said. “The World T20 is closing in and we have to sort this out as soon as possible. The next game we will come back and make a good combination," concluded the Lahore born.
Having levelled the series now, a spirited Zimbabwe would come back to face the Babar led side one last time in the T20 series at the Harare Sports Club on Sunday for the decider.