Pakistan coach warns against witch hunt against team management

Pakistan v South Africa: Match Centre, Scorecard

Pakistan’s last-wicket loss to South Africa leaves them with only a very slim chance of reaching the tournament’s knockout stages, and comes on the back of mounting pressure against the captain Babar Azam and chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq.

And while Arthur accepts that blame will come, even from within Pakistan cricket, he says that such a reaction would be unfair.

“It's really unfair to start a witch hunt, certainly on Babar Azam, on Inzi, on our coaches, on the management team,” Arthur said.

“What I do know is the boys have tried and the effort of the coaching staff, the effort of the players has been first-class. If they would see that the amount of effort that the players and staff put in, they would be amazed.”

Pakistan’s chances of reaching the semi-finals in India had been severely hit by their disappointing defeat to Afghanistan.

While the result was the same against South Africa, Arthur said that the performance was completely different.

“Tonight is a totally different feeling in that dressing room to the Afghanistan game. The Afghanistan game was… we were average in all departments," he said.

“Tonight, we were OK with the bat, I thought we were very good with the ball.

“I'm really proud of those (players) because they fought right to the bitter end.”

State of Play at the Cricket World Cup

Four of Pakistan’s top five all got starts, but just 27.5 overs were gone when Babar returned to the hutch after scoring an excellent 50, leaving Pakistan with all five dismissed and the lower-middle order handed the responsibility.

It follows a pattern of a misfiring Pakistan top order, who came into the tournament as one of the team’s strengths.

“We always set ourselves up to have one of your top four in at over 40," Arthur noted.

“You talk about the success that we've had over the last year; we've had one of our top four generally getting hundreds. We've had two hundreds this competition so far, both in the same game.

“So, we've had players get in. We've had players get starts. We haven't had players go through.”

Saud Shakeel (52), Shadab Khan (43) and Mohammad Nawaz (24) added runs in quick fashion from that lower-middle order, but wickets fell towards the back end, as Pakistan were bowled out with 3.2 overs still remaining.

“I don't think we managed the last five overs particularly well tonight. There was still, at one point, in the 45th over, I remember saying to the dressing room a run a ball gets us 295 and a little bit more we've got us 300," Arthur added.

“I know we would have defended 300 tonight. So, I don't think we managed that back end particularly well at all. And we left balls out there that we didn't face.”

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Pakistan return to action against Bangladesh on Tuesday when they will look to put the record straight with both bat and ball.