Dubai: Mickey Arthur, the coach of the Karachi Kings team, is a happy man. After Karachi’s three consecutive victories in the ongoing Pakistan Super League (PSL), when he was asked what he did to bring about the transformation, he promptly narrated the reasons.
“First and foremost we were pretty particular over our recruitment process. We looked at players that we wanted, especially players that would fit the bill, players we knew would be really good team players.
“This is the reason behind the signing up of players like Colin Ingram, Chris Jordan and Ravi Bopara. We knew they will give us performance because for these players playing in the PSL is very important for them. In fact, PSL is their international cricket and they want to perform well in this tournament and they know that if they perform here it will give them a gateway to other T20 tournaments.
“They come extremely hungry and so they have lifted the intensity and they have been brilliant. We have played some very good cricket and we have very good bowling attack but we know we are not near for any form of celebration yet.”
Riding on Bopara’s half century, Karachi recorded their 27-run win over Lahore Qalandars on Monday night. Arthur, narrated how he urged Bopara to perform well. “I was very hard on Ravi [Bopara] last night during the team de-briefing. I felt that he let the game drift against Peshawar Zalmi when he should have finished that match in the 19th over. That game should not have gone past the 19th over [as Karachi won only with two balls to spare]. So today Ravi came out to bat with a little bit of fire in his belly and went and played an innings that we wanted. At the Time-Out we wanted to get ourselves to 100 runs with 30 balls to go as we wanted 50 more runs off the next 30 balls as we thought we can defend 150. Ravi played exceptionally well and got us ten runs more than what we needed,” said Arthur.
Talking about Afridi, who bagged the man of the match award, Arthur, who is also the coach of the Pakistan national team, said: “I can only speak highly of the contribution that Afridi is making in the dressing room. He is like a kid again and after he took that catch the other night he came to me and said “coach you had said you have to be able to field well to get into the Pakistan side and since I can do it I am available again.
“Afridi has been outstanding in his role. He has done everything asked off him and he has trained hard and his bowling has been fantastic as well as his fielding. I have a feeling that there is an innings somewhere in this competition that he is going to win a game for us.”
Brief scores: Karachi Kings bt Lahore Qalandars by 27 runs. Karachi Kings 159 for 7 in 20 overs (Joe Denly 28, Colin Ingram 28, Ravi Bopara 50 n.o., Sohail Khan 2 for 45, Yasir Shah 2 for 25, Sunil Narine 2 for 18) Lahore Qalandars 132 in 18.3 overs (Brendon McCullum 44, Shahid Afridi 3 for 19, Usman Khan 3 for 26, Tymal Mills 2 for 33). Man of the match: Shahid Afridi
