I think that was a throwaway comment and in reality England are about 90 per cent sure of their best XI.
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Pakistan: Ahmed Shehzad b Willey 4, Raffatullah Mohmand lbw b Willey 0, Mohammad Hafeez run out 1, Shoaib Malik c Billings b Woakes 75, Mohammad Rizwan c and b Rashid 24, Umar Akmal c Jordan b Moeen 4, Shahid Afridi b Willey 29, Sohail Tanvir not out 10, Anwar Ali not out 0.
In the third T20I against England, Pakistan were well placed to claim a victory when 18 runs were needed from the last two overs.
Shaken by Pakistan’s defeats to England in the ODI and T20 series in the UAE, the national selectors are seeking answers from head coach Waqar Younis and his support staff over what went wrong in those matches.
The victory was England’s sixth consecutive Twenty20 success heading into the World T20 in India in March.
Having started the series on a positive note with a 2-0 win against England in the Test matches Pakistan succumbed to successive losses in the One-Day International and the T20I campaigns. Hopefully this time next year they’ll have played 30.
England’s limited-overs personnel has been overhauled since last winter’s embarrassing early exit from the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and a much younger team has responded with a string of exhilarating performances.
“But it’s pretty exciting – the acceleration of our learning curve is happening quite quickly, because we’re winning, we’re growing in confidence, building momentum”.
“We’re a very new side – we’ve only played five games together as a squad”. We’re in the best position we could be at the moment.
“We have 15 athletes – fitness is a priority of ours – and we’re always striving to improve our fielding”. On a pitch notable for its relatively slow rate of scoring, Buttler smashed an incredible 46 ball century, easily the quickest 50 over century scored by an England batman and the equal seventh fastest ODI century of all time. Haroon reportedly is not happy with the way available players are being “experimented” with in the series.
“We’ve had two flawless individual performances – CJ’s (Jordan’s) over today (Monday) and Jos’ (Buttler) hundred in Dubai”.
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“We’ve had very little time together, but the development of the side long-term is looking really bright at the moment – looking to the Twenty20 “World Cup”, the Champions Trophy in 2017 and the World Cup in 2019″. Chris Jordan then produced a superb series of yorkers to restrict Pakistan to just 3-1, giving England an easy target made with two balls to spare. “I’ve seen stranger things happen”.
