Pakistan vs UAE: You just can’t relax in this format, says Shahid Afridi

Pakistan lost their top-order cheaply in the 130-run chase. (Source: AP)

After surviving early jolts in Monday’s chase against UAE, Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi said his team must cut down on mistakes to have any chance of beating the bigger teams in the Asia Cup.

“Today’s game showed that you just can’t relax in this format, you can’t relax in the dressing room. We are making some mistakes and you can’t afford that against the bigger teams,” Afridi said after Pakistan picked up a seven wicket win over UAE.

Pakistan allowed UAE to score 129 after reducing the minnows to 3/12 before surviving nervous moments at the start of the chase.

“I told my batsmen just play normal cricket, don’t go for big runs. We thought after we took three wickets we thought we would get them out for 90-100 but they played well and some shots went off for them ..(off the edges). They played well in the end. We would have like to have a match like this before playing India,” added Afridi.

Man of the Match Shoaib Malik, who bailed his team out of trouble alongside Umar Akmal, said batting was tough in the middle.

“Tough conditions, we all know the first six overs has been crucial, if you survive then you can play shots and that is what we did. We lost early wickets but then we decided to forget about the run rate and focus on playing out the first six overs. We bowled well in the first six overs but then we were a bit all over the place,” said Malik.

UAE captain Amjad Javed said the game was a good learning experience for his side.

“We wanted about 120 but we got 10 runs extra, we knew it would be difficult to chase, we got some early wickets but we could not capitalise on that. We are still learning, Malik and Akmal took the game away from us. The team is really doing well, I did my best to contribute and try and bring the game back, and make Pakistan work hard. Our coach Aaqib Javed was sure we could give them a fight if we scored 100,” said Javed.