Grant Bradburn, the head of High-commission cricket working with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), sees the defect in fielding as a reason for Pakistan’s downfall in the ICC rankings in all three formats. He believes that their ranking in all the formats does not define and represent the talent they possess.
Discussing players’ dissonance to poor fielding, he stated a few statements regarding Pakistan’s position in T20I, ODI, and Test cricket. He added although the Men in Green are capable but still are not in the top five teams.
Grant Bradburn blames Pakistan’s fielding for their downfall
“Pakistan has capable cricketers but it is not in the top five of Tests and ODIs. Even in T20s we have slipped a position and are now second.”
“The batsmen and bowlers here have a lot of skill but the fielding has a lot of room for improvement,” he said.
Discussing the recently concluded National T20 Cup, he said that fielding was below the expectations and blames fitness as a reason terming the factors as ‘interlinked’.
“The fielding in the National T20 Cup was certainly very weak. [To improve that] we need to improve fitness levels as both are deeply interconnected. If fitness gets better, fielding gets better.”
Blaming the coach’s performance, Bradburn believes their standard needs to be raised for the betterment of Pakistan Cricket as they have a major role. Further elaborating, the coach praised Pakistan’s former cricketers who had a vast knowledge of the game and has asked them to work hard to keep the cricket alive.
“We need to raise the standard of our fielding coaches,” he said. “The coaches have a major role. They will have to work hard and keep the players active.
Pakistan has had many great cricketers who have deep knowledge of the game. We need to turn them into great coaches so that they can transfer their knowledge into the current generation of players.”
