<\/p>\n
LONDON:<\/strong>\u00a0Pakistan find themselves \u201calive and kicking\u201d in the World Cup despite a disastrous start as coach Mickey Arthur warned his unpredictable team were still competing for the semi-finals.<\/p>\n The green shirts were on the brink of elimination after losing three of their first five games, including a bruising defeat to arch-rivals India. Sunday\u2019s 49-run win over South Africa has kept alive Pakistan\u2019s chances of qualifying for the last four.<\/p>\n They now need to win their remaining three matches against New Zealand, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and hope other results go their way.<\/p>\n New Zealand are top of the 10-team table ahead of Australia, India and England, followed by Sri Lanka, Bangladesh with Pakistan in seventh place.<\/p>\n England, recovering from their lost against Sri Lanka, will be out of the running for the last four if they lose their remaining three games against Australia, India and New Zealand.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are alive and kicking, without a doubt,\u201d said Arthur. \u201cYes, we are banking on other teams doing us a favour. It probably is \u2013 but we\u2019ve got to win three games.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur said Pakistan, who stunned England earlier in the tournament, can beat any team if they play to their potential.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we play our best game, we can beat anybody. Whether that\u2019s New Zealand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, our remaining games, or England, we showed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe put our three disciplines together, we are as good as any team in this competition. We are very firmly in the World Cup. We win our next three games, we\u2019ll qualify.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur said his players came out fighting after their defeat to India in Manchester last week.<\/p>\n \u201cOur boys hurt, all of us hurt, incredibly. Guys didn\u2019t sleep much, but they came to the training every day and put in (hard work) in order to try and turn it around, and we got some just reward against South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n Pakistan still need to hugely improve their sloppy fielding, dropping as many as five catches against South Africa \u2013 three of them by Mohammad Amir.<\/p>\n \u201cOur problem is we haven\u2019t put three disciplines together yet in any game,\u201d said Arthur whose team scored 308-7 against South Africa before restricting them to 259-9.<\/p>\n \u201cWe bowled well; we batted well; we didn\u2019t field well (against South Africa). So when we put three disciplines together, we\u2019ll be exceptional.<\/p>\n \u201cThe closest we\u2019ve got was when we beat England”.<\/p>\n People need to shut up for team morale boost<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, Pakistan\u2019s head coach Mickey Arthur believes that Pakistan\u2019s performance against South Africa on Sunday at Lord\u2019s will silence the critics for a bit.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think the guys were burnt out last week. The guys were incredibly hurt by media, public, social media\u2026 And hopefully, we got a proper reaction from them today that can just shut some people up for a little while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOur guys need to be built up all the time. The minute they are bashed, like they have been the last week, our guys don\u2019t respond to that in a very kind way and hopefully, we got a performance out today that vindicates the talent the boys have on the team,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Speaking about the green shirt\u2019s next match against New Zealand at Birmingham on Wednesday, Arthur admitted that all efforts must be put in to save face and reaching the semifinals.<\/p>\n \u201cI know we can beat New Zealand. It\u2019s amazing what a difference a week can make. Our boys got hurt this week, all of us were hurt, incredibly. Guys didn\u2019t sleep much, but they came to the training every day and put the effort in, to try and turn it around and today we got some just reward,\u201d he said on Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are alive and kicking, without a doubt, and we play our best game, we beat anybody. Whether that\u2019s New Zealand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, our remaining games, or England, we showed. We put our three disciplines together, we are as good as any team in this competition,\u201d Arthur added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LONDON:\u00a0Pakistan find themselves \u201calive and kicking\u201d in the World Cup despite a disastrous start as coach Mickey Arthur warned his unpredictable team were still competing for the semi-finals. The green shirts were on the brink of elimination after losing three of their first five games, including a bruising defeat to arch-rivals India. Sunday\u2019s 49-run […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","post_format-post-format-aside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}