Former captain Rashid Latif took a veiled dig at the Pakistan team after the national side lost the fourth T20I against New Zealand on Thursday in Lahore.
Speaking after the match, Latif hinted that Pakistan team should keep their focus on cricket rather than indulging in matters off the field.
“When you are playing outside the ground, then you won’t be able to perform on the field during a match. I can say this for certain and I’m sure people can understand what I’m trying to say,” Latif said on his YouTube channel ‘Caught Behind’.
The Green Shirts came close to chasing the target down but fell four runs short as all-rounder Imad Wasim couldn’t take his side over the line in the last over.
After being put into bat first by Pakistan captain Babar Azam, the visitors posted 178/7 while Pakistan finished on 174/8 in the chase.
This was Pakistan’s second loss in the five-match T20I series against New Zealand and their chances of winning the series are over as, even with a win in the last match, they will only be able to level it.
Talking after the match, Azam hailed his bowlers saying that they managed to restrict them under 180 as he had hoped but an early batting collapse dented their chances of chasing the target.
“I think we restricted them in bowling really well. We were expecting 190-200 but the bowlers stuck to their plans, it was chaseable, but we had a batting collapse. We lost three-four wickets in the powerplay but Fakhar's innings was outstanding. We wanted to chase it with positive intent but we were unable to do so,” Babar said after the match.
“When you lose back-to-back wickets, you need a few overs to catch up but that we got derailed in that period. It was a different surface; we were coming back after a long time, average score is 190 so I think we restricted them well.”
- Rashid Latif
