Pakistan eye series-winning triumph against WI

KARACHI: Pakistan will look to seal a series-winning triumph by winning their third Twenty20 International against hosts West Indies at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain (Trinidad) on Saturday (today).

Having won the first two games of the four-match series, Pakistan have the upper hand and will be hoping to give yet another forceful showing in today’s game to win their second consecutive T20 series against the West Indies, the reigning world Twenty20 champions.

Rookie leggie Shadab Khan was the chief tormentor for the hosts in the first two games and appeared set to set to West Indian misery on Saturday. He has taken seven wickets in the first two games at an average of 3, a strike-rate of 6.8 and an economy rate of 2.6.

But if the West Indians are intimidated by the 18-year-old, then they are hiding it well.

West Indies coach Stuart Law believes his batsmen “gifted” some wickets away to the young spinner and the best way to combat him was to be “more ruthless.”

Shadab received lavish praise from his senior team-mate Shoaib Malik.

“I must appreciate and praise Shadab for the way he has been conducting himself, and taking wickets,” Malik said. “Obviously we all know, if you’re playing against West Indies, you have to keep taking wickets. They are big guys, they hit boundaries and I think this is what we have been doing.”

As a result, West Indies are stuck with a lot of questions and no ready answers. They have gone 0-2 down in a four-match T20I series and have to win Saturday’s match to stay alive. Since they were crowned World T20 champions in March 2016 - and then beat India in a high-scoring match in Florida - the team has lost five matches in a row. All to Pakistan. Coach Law, while admitting the need to “start playing better cricket,” cautioned against taking reactionary decisions.

“It’s pretty new at this stage,” he said. “We just want to take the emotion out of it tonight. Get up with a clear head tomorrow morning and start thinking about it.

“I think we are clicking. We’re getting better. We’ve gelled really well as a team over the last couple of days. I don’t think that’s the case. I think we’ve just got to start playing better cricket. There’s glimpses of our talent, we just need to have that glimpse for a lot longer.

“Our bowling has been excellent over the last couple of games, our catching’s been outstanding, few mistakes in the ground fielding but our batting is where we need to really have a look. Apart from Marlon, no one’s really gone in and got the scores. We’ve had a couple of starts, but I just think we need someone to go on and I think it’s getting better. Fingers crossed on Saturday we turn up and play a proper game of cricket.”

Pakistan have their mind firmly on winning their second straight T20I series against West Indies. In a SWOT analysis of the team’s performance so far, Malik picked out their fielding as an improvement and their batting in the Powerplay as needing work.

“Positives, if you look at our fielding, that’s where we’ve always lacked. But the way the guys are putting in an effort here, I think that’s a great sign for Pakistan cricket. And our physical fitness.

“You could see even in the field, the guys roaming around, moving fast. And negatives. We really need to improve our first six overs in the batting. I think we’re going to sit and talk about it and we will come up with something.”