{"id":23191,"date":"2023-11-10T12:48:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T12:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/no-pressure-babar-azam-blasts-critics-as-world-cup-dream-slips-away\/"},"modified":"2023-11-10T12:48:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T12:48:00","slug":"no-pressure-babar-azam-blasts-critics-as-world-cup-dream-slips-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/no-pressure-babar-azam-blasts-critics-as-world-cup-dream-slips-away\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No pressure\u2019 Babar Azam blasts critics as World Cup dream slips away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div dir=\"auto\">\n<p>Skipper Babar Azam blasted his critics on Friday, telling them it\u2019s easy to give advice on TV\u201c as he refused to surrender his World Cup dreams.<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan have to defeat defending champions England by at least 287 runs on Saturday to oust New Zealand as the fourth and last semi-finalist on net run rate.<\/p>\n<p>Failure to do so will spark more questions over Azam\u2019s captaincy, a position he has held for three years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have not performed the way I should have in the World Cup, that\u2019s why people are saying that I am under pressure. I am under no pressure,\u201d insisted the 29-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone has their own point of view, their own way of thinking. Everyone is saying something different. He should be like this, or like that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf someone has to give me advice, everyone has my number. It is easy to give advice on TV. If you want to give me some advice, you can message me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Azam has made 282 runs at the tournament with an average of just over 40 and four fifties.<\/p>\n<p>However, as captain, he has overseen four defeats in eight games including a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1783074\">shock loss<\/a> to Afghanistan and a shattering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1784146\">one-wicket defeat<\/a> to South Africa.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media  sm:w-1\/2  w-full  media--right  media--embed  media--uneven\">\n<p>    <iframe class=\"nk-iframe\" onload=\"setInterval(()=&gt;{try{this.style.height=this.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+'px';}catch{}}, 100)\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"height:400px;position:relative\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/card\/1786455\" sandbox=\"allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>They stayed alive in the tournament last weekend when Fakhar Zaman\u2019s unbeaten 81-ball 126 not out inspired a rain-hit win over New Zealand despite the Black Caps having piled up 401-6.<\/p>\n<p>Azam insisted his team has not given up hope of pulling off a victory over England despite the huge margin required.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not like this matter is not in the back of the mind. It\u2019s in our mind and we will try to do it,\u201d said Azam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we can\u2019t just go in and start firing blindly \u2013 we want that but with proper planning, how we want to play the first 10 overs, then the next 20 \u2013 how we have to achieve that target.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are a lot of things in this, like partnerships, which player will stay on the pitch for how long. I would say if Fakhar is in the match for 20 or 30 overs, we can achieve that. We can do this and we have planned for this,\u201d the skipper said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media  sm:w-1\/2  w-full  media--right  media--embed  media--uneven\">\n<p>    <iframe class=\"nk-iframe\" onload=\"setInterval(()=&gt;{try{this.style.height=this.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+'px';}catch{}}, 100)\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"height:400px;position:relative\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/card\/1787935\" sandbox=\"allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Pakistan have never scored more than 361 against England, which they achieved at Southampton in 2019. Their biggest victory over the English was 108 runs 22 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan, the 1992 champions, started the World Cup with wins over the Netherlands and Sri Lanka but then suffered back-to-back losses to India and Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Defeats to Afghanistan and the Proteas followed before victories over Bangladesh and New Zealand revived their slim semi-final hopes.<\/p>\n<p>Azam, however, pointed to the defeat against South Africa in Chennai as a crucial setback.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were hurt by the defeat in the South Africa match We should have won the Afghanistan game as well and it\u2019s because of those defeats that we are at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added: \u201cMy goal was to finish matches and win them with my performance and there were expectations from me and I accept that I have not done what was expected of me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite likely elimination on Saturday, Azam said that Pakistan should not be written off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you think we have lost all World Cups since 1999?\u201d Azam asked. \u201cIf you look at the T20 World Cup, we were in the Asia Cup (2022 final), we played in the final in Australia (T20 World Cup 2022),\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skipper Babar Azam blasted his critics on Friday, telling them it\u2019s easy to give advice on TV\u201c as he refused to surrender his World Cup dreams. Pakistan have to defeat defending champions England by at least 287 runs on Saturday to oust New Zealand as the fourth and last semi-finalist on net run rate. Failure [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2023\/11\/101650405d1f815.jpg?r=165057","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}