Afridi: Can’t afford to make mistakes against stronger teams

"Today’s game showed that you just can’t relax in this format, you can’t relax in the dressing room. We are making some mistakes and you can’t afford that against the bigger teams," Afridi said after Pakistan recorded a seven wicket win over UAE.

Published : Feb 29, 2016 23:53 IST , Mirpur

Shahid Afridi's (in picture) men recorded their first win of the tournament.
Shahid Afridi's (in picture) men recorded their first win of the tournament.
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Shahid Afridi's (in picture) men recorded their first win of the tournament.

After surviving an early scare in today’s chase against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi said his team must reduce the mistakes to have any chance of beating the higher-ranked teams in the Asia Cup.

“Today’s game showed that you just can’t relax in this format, you can’t relax in the dressing room. We are making some mistakes and you can’t afford that against the bigger teams,” Afridi said after Pakistan recorded a seven wicket win over UAE.

Pakistan allowed UAE to score 129 after reducing it to 12 for three.

“I told my batsmen just play normal cricket, don’t go for big runs. We thought after we took three wickets we thought we would get them out for 90-100 but they played well and some shots went off for them (off the edges). They played well in the end. We would have like to have a match like this before playing India,” added Afridi.

Man of the Match Shoaib Malik, who bailed his team out of trouble with Umar Akmal, said the conditions were tough.

“Tough conditions, we all know the first six overs has been crucial, if you survive then you can play shots and that is what we did. We lost early wickets but then we decided to forget about the run rate and focus on playing out the first six overs. We bowled well in the first six overs but then we were a bit all over the place,” said Malik.

UAE captain Amjad Javed said the game was a good learning experience for his side.

“We wanted about 120 but we got 10 runs extra, we knew it would be difficult to chase, we got some early wickets but we could not capitalise on that. We are still learning, Malik and Akmal took the game away from us. The team is really doing well, I did my best to contribute and try and bring the game back, and make Pakistan work hard. Our coach Aaqib Javed was sure we could give them a fight if we scored 100,” said Javed.

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