Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur, speaking in the post-match press conference after his team’s 49-run win said that while they were still “alive and kicking” in the World Cup, he hopes that the performance could help “shut some people up”.
Pakistan’s win has kept them alive in the tournament, with semi-final qualification still a possibility should they win their remaining games. Asked if Pakistan only picked up their game after losing their first few, Arthur said, “No, we don’t do that by any design, I promise you. We try and win every game we play.
“We’re trying to get that consistency better. You ask me that question every press conference. Yes, we are trying to get more and more consistent. We try that every day with our training and preparation.
“What I do know is that guys do, when their are backs to the wall, we get some good performances out of them, and maybe, yeah, I just think the guys were burnt last week. The guys were incredibly hurt, by media, by public, by social media, and hopefully we got a proper reaction from them today that can just shut some people up for a little while.”
Pakistan were convincing in their victory over South Africa, but their fielding still left a lot to be desired, with plenty of dropped catches. Arthur insisted that it was just a matter of going back to the drawing board and trying to improve.
“We train and we train and we train, and we’ve put in massive amounts of work. That’s something we’ll be exploring again in the next couple of days because we can’t be dropping that many catches and expect to beat teams getting into almost a knockout phase for us,” Arthur said.
