Photo: Jang
Aftab Khan, the fielding coach of the Pakistan cricket team, has admitted that the quality of Pakistan’s fielding is not that of the top teams, which is mainly due to the lack of importance given to fielding at the domestic and grassroots levels.
Speaking to the media at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, Aftab Khan said that if steps are not taken to improve fielding at the grassroots level, it may be difficult going forward.
He said that fielding is the field that requires the most fitness. The player has to stay in 90 to 100 over ground which requires fitness.
He said that fielding is not given much importance in our culture, one cannot compete with the best teams in the world with a fielding practice session of 10, 15 minutes. Australia, New Zealand, India and even Afghanistan have better fielding. We have to give time to fielding as well as batting and bowling.
He expressed hope that the fielding issues would be resolved soon but also stressed that fielding should be worked on at the grassroots, domestic and academy levels as these are the other teams competing for the top while we The basics have to be worked on.
He said that in our domestic culture it is not given much lift, the work we are doing at the international level should be done at the domestic level.
Aftab Khan said that these players are working hard. Fielding is better than in the past and the boys are hitting.
On a question, Aftab Khan said that it is important to be mentally strong in fielding, when pressure comes, many things go wrong. If the fielding culture is better, everything will be better. Hopefully it will improve in the future.
He said that I believe that our ground fielding is very bad, we are behind in it, our catches have improved but we also have to improve our ground fielding. If we want to compete with the top teams, we have to keep the fielding at a top level.
To a question, the fielding coach of the Pakistan team said that fielding is something that has to be done in any situation and a fielder cannot hide anywhere, for that you need to be on top, in our future matches, if our system is right. If not, there will be problems going forward.
Asked about Fakhar Zaman’s game improvement, Aftab Khan said that every player is told how to improve. Fakhar has worked hard to improve his game, more than me. I just said that these things have to be improved, I told Fakhar how to improve his shots, the target zone was earlier square off-wicket, improved it and made it straighter and towards mid-wicket.
It should be noted that Fakhar Zaman gave credit to fielding coach Aftab Khan for improving his performance in the press conference after his century in the match against New Zealand.
Aftab Khan said that our history is that we don’t do anything in advance, we react, the other teams try to cover as soon as they come, we wake up when the pressure is on us and do well later. When danger looms overhead, we need to do this thing better.
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