Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq Friday urged his players to be more responsible and perform exceptionally well to overshadow the spot-fixing controversy. “The most important thing is to focus on performance and ensure that we play good cricket. The team must focus on cricket and only cricket,” Pak Passion quoted Misbah, as saying. “In the last year-and-a-half the team has done very well in all formats of the game. The priority and attention has to be on playing good cricket and that is what we have been trying to achieve.
All players are putting other things to the back of their minds and concentrating only on cricket,” he added. Last year’s spot fixing scandal has tarnished the image of Pakistan cricket team, with many within the cricket fraternity calling it an ‘unfortunate’ incident. But, Misbah said that this will not affect the performance of the Pakistan cricket team.
“We did well in the World Cup and also our performances in Test cricket have been consistent and that is our aim. What has been going on in London is painful, but we are all mentally very tough and we will not let it affect our performance,” he added. Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt was handed a 30-month prison sentence for spot-fixing in London. Fast bowler Mohammad Asif was also sent to prison for one year and teenage fast bowler Mohammad Amir for six months for deliberately bowling no-balls during a test against England last year.
