Pakistani cricket greats are all hopeful about Pakistan’s easy sailing through the group stage to reach semi-finals.
The next match Pakistan is going to play will be against minnows Afghanistan today. The chief executive officer of Afghanistan made a rather controversial and pompous statement about Pakistani team. He said Afghanistan were better than Pakistan and they could even help them coach cricket.
This has attracted wrath of Pakistani legends. The fastest cricket bowler, Shoaib Akhtar said, “If I told that almost all of you are holding Pakistani identity cards, your team could be banned.” He said that most of them have lived in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.
Shoaib Akhtar said apart from victories in two matches Pakistan were also dependent on India to beat England and he thought that this was going to happen.
Pakistan currently stand at 6th place. Two of these four teams England, Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh are most likely to book remaining two berths of semi-finals, while India and Australia are almost there. If Pakistan reach semi-finals, they will face India.
Former cricketer Basit Ali suspects that India would deliberately lose matches so that Pakistan could not qualify for semi-finals.
So, every match counts for Pakistan now whether they are in it or not. Former player and commentator Ramiz Raja believes that playing Afghanistan spinners adeptly would be the key to victory. There is much hope that Pakistan have the potential to crush them and then Pakistan will face Bangladesh on July 5.
