Miandad backs underfire Misbah

Pakistan great Javed Miandad has come out in strong support of under pressure national captain Misbah-ul-Haq, who decided to "rest" from the third ODI against Australia.
"No one realises that it is because Misbah is not scoring runs is the main reason for the team's recent poor performances in Sri Lanka and Australia. Now his critics and these experts need to realise his value to the team as a leader on the field and as a batsman," Miandad told PTI today.
Miandad, who has been chief coach of the national team thrice, said those trying to give the impression that Misbah was the problem in the team were doing no service to the team.

"Tell me what has changed in this team since the Sri Lanka tour. One Misbah is out of form but the rest of the players are doing the same things they did before they score in one match and fail in next three," he noted.
Miandad said he didn't see any sense or wisdom in allowing Misbah to rest from the third ODI and hand over the captaincy to Afridi.
"Shahid Afridi has been around for so many years and he has played around 380 ODIs. Yet even today he is doing the same things and repeating the same mistakes. So where are these high profile coaches? Look at records when I was coach Shahid gave his best performances with the bat," Miandad stated.

He pointed out that Misbah in the past used to score runs consistency and get Pakistan out of trouble and that is not happening now.

"And what are we doing further trying to demoralise him and then we also drop Younis Khan from the ODI side against Australia. It makes no sense to me."
Miandad said the impression he got was that unless the board and management gave 100 percent support to Misbah, the Pakistan team will continue to slide down in performance.
"They have to realise he is not the problem. The problem is the selectors and coaches don't know how to pick the World Cup squad or for different formats."

He pointed out that for the World Cup different type of players were required for the pitches in Australia and New Zealand.
"We unlike other countries are not blessed with loads of talent now in fact we have few players who can comfortably play in all three formats and the reason for this is their focus is on other things other than cricket," said Miandad.