ADELAIDE:
Young batsmen Ahmed Shehzad, Umar Akmal and Sohaib Maqsood underwent on Wednesday a special batting practice session lasting an hour ahead of Pakistan’s crunch quarter-final clash with Australia in Adelaide.
Pakistan team head coach Waqar Younis along with batting coach Grant Flower and assistant coach Shahid Aslam arrived at the Adelaide Oval net area an hour before the scheduled practice session to supervise the specific training given to the three young batsmen who would be tackling the imposing challenge of left-arm Australian pacers on Friday.
Mitchell Starc, the leading wicket-taker at the World Cup, alongside ever-threatening veteran Mitchell Johnson and James Faulkner who will be assisted by right-armer Pat Cummins, will form a big test for Pakistan batsmen.
Various batting practice modes with the help of a bowling machine using varying speeds were conducted to provide special batting practice to the young trio in order to address the worrisome issue of Pakistan’s brittle batting.
Shahid used a large marble slab to test the three youngsters with short-pitched bowling aimed at preparing Shehzad, Umar and Sohaib against top-quality Aussie fast bowlers.
The three batsmen at the practice session played some powerful pull and hook shots.
“Yes we provided them special training and it is an old practice to prepare batsmen against fast bowlers,” Waqar said. “All three are very talented batsmen and now is the time for them to produce big show in the big game [against Australia].”
Believing Pakistan had enough batting firepower, Waqar hoped his batsmen would come up with some good performances to steer the team to victory against the hosts.
Both Australia and Pakistan squads underwent a full three-hour practice session in their build-up for the much-anticipated quarter-final.