Dubai: The uncertainty of Twenty20 format often has the best of captains wracking their heads to find out what’s going wrong with their teams.

When Gulf News asked Shoaib Malek, skipper of the Multan Sultans that looked unbeatable in the first round and suddenly slipped from top of the table to fourth through three successive defeats, as to why his team crashed to defeats, he said: “Honestly speaking, even I have been trying to find the reason and our whole coaching staff are also trying to find where the problem is. But, yes, there are a couple of areas where we really need to improve.”

When Lahore Qalandars kept crashing to defeats, their coach Aaqib Javed too was forced to remark: “I have never seen such a batting failure in my 30 years of cricket. At least one of them should have converted their good start- into 70 or more runs.”

Malek, after the defeat to Karachi, tried to strengthen himself by saying that his team will come back but the worry on his face could not be wiped away. “This is not the end of the world. We leaked a few extra runs, and when you’re chasing a big total, you need to have wickets in hand. Early on, the pitch was fresh and the ball was coming on. But, having said that, need to give credit to Karachi’s batsmen, especially Joe Denly and Babar, who strung together a partnership and accelerated when it was needed.”

Malek also believes that this is the moment that his team should stage a comeback. “Franchise cricket, in any event, you win games, you lose games. When you lose games it shows your character how you take it. Obviously there are couple of things which we need to work on, we have two days off so it will be a good thing for our team to sit and talk about and come up with better plans.”

Right now, Malek could only say that his team must improve from here on. “I have said this we need improvement. We played the first game with five bowlers and then with seven batsmen, so there is that confusion and then we have fielding issue which we need to improve. We need consistent performance from the players.”