'Out of favour' Kamran Akmal advises brother Umar to focus on batting

Out of favour Pakistani wicket-keeper batsman Kamran Akmal has advised his brother Umar to focus on his batting, saying that he has talent in that department and is by nature a specialist attacking batsman.

The elder Akmal, who has played 53 Tests, 154 one-day internationals and 50 Twenty20 matches for his country, was dropped from the side for the West Indies tour after the recent ICC Champions Trophy along with two other senior players, Shoaib Malik and Imran Farhat, The Nation reports.

Even though the national selectors and the team management has given the responsibilities of wicket-keeping to his younger brother Umar, Akmal senior however, denigrated the choice, saying that Umar should have been allowed to focus only on his batting instead of burdening him with an extra keeping job.

However, the elder Akmal kept his fingers crossed and wished luck to his brother, who kept in the first two ODIs on the current tour of the West Indies, doing a tidy job behind the stumps besides scoring a half-century.

In his quest to make another comeback to the national team, Akmal is ready to compromise on his batting position, although he said that he is more comfortable batting up the order, preferably as an opener as he likes to play the two new balls, being used nowadays in the ODIs.

According to the report, Akmal was sent one-down in the only match he got to play in the Champions Trophy in UK where Pakistan lost all three of their group matches and had to bat lower down the order as per requirement of the management in the tournament.

Meanwhile, the senior player, who made his debut in 2010, said that he does not believe that his international cricket career is over, adding that he never gave up hope even after he was dropped from the national team.