Even though Pakistan managed to gain a victory over South Africa in the first ODI, batsman Imam-ul-Haq was disappointed with himself as he was not able to finish off the game.
Chasing 274, Pakistan was sitting comfortably at 186/1 with both Imam (70) and Babar Azam (103) crossing their personal milestones. However, Anrich Nortje’s introduction quickly reduced Pakistan to 203/5 in the 38th over. In the end, the visitors did manage to win by three wickets.
“You know there’s this pandemic bringing everyone down these days and so we thought we’d entertain people a little. But on a serious note, if you want to win big tournaments and become a top-three team… it’s not as if we don’t talk about this in our meetings, it gets discussed, that if your top three get set in white-ball, then in other teams they don’t just make 100, they get 150,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Imam as saying.
“That is what we’re trying to do, like Babar Azam and I were set today, we should finish the game. We were playing an ODI after a long time. We want to learn from our mistakes and turn these 70s and 80s into matchwinning knocks and turn a win like this into a seven- or six-wicket win,” he added.
Talking about his own knock of 70 runs, Imam said: “To be honest, I’m very disappointed in not finishing the game. I’ve been waiting one and a half years since my last hundred. I haven’t had that many opportunities in the last year. You don’t always get what you want, but I’ve got two more games to make up for it.”
After scoring a ton against South Africa, Babar Azam became the fastest to score 13 ODI hundreds in men’s international cricket, going past the likes of Virat Kohli and Hashim Amla.
South Africa and Pakistan will now lock horns in the second ODI on Sunday. (ANI)
