Head coach Shahid Anwer said that Pakistan had achieved their goal of playing “fearless but not careless cricket” after they won the Under-19 Asia Cup with a crushing victory over India on Sunday.
Opener Sameer Minhas led the way for Pakistan at the ICC Academy Ground in Dubai with a breathtaking 172 to set up a massive 191-run victory for his side.
“We began a process on June 17 [this year],” recalled Shahid at a news conference in Islamabad on Monday, following the team’s arrival and a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif where a Rs10million cash award was announced.
“It was an unprecedented step … we called up 70 players, conducted trials and gave each player four matches each and then they participated in a regional One-day tournament,” he added.
“The top performers, 30 of them, then took part in a five-month long camp … that’s how the team was made.
“We wanted to play fearless but not careless cricket. We wanted a united team and the result is in front of us.”
Team mentor and manager Sarfaraz Ahmed, who led Pakistan to the Under-19 World Cup crown in 2006, hailed a “team effort”.
“We had players that had the potential to do something big,” said Sarfaraz.
“The coaches did a lot of hard work and the players responded … our job was to give them the confidence to play to their full potential. My message to them was to play their natural game, and in a way that they remember it for the rest of their lives.”
Captain Farhan Yousaf said the players had the full backing of the team management.
“We spoke about playing fearless cricket and the management backed us to play our natural game,” he said.
“We were told us that any loss will be our [management’s] concern, while any victory will be attributed to your efforts. Our morale never went down.”
Shahid pointed to the fact that the coaching staff was lucky to have been blessed with qualified players.
“In age group cricket, most of the work is on basics,” he said. “We were lucky in the sense that these players had two qualities that we only needed to polish: one that they didn’t give up and second that they were adaptable.”
Sameer’s stunning ton was naturally one of the major talking points at the news conference and the batter said that he stuck to his natural game.
“I was focused on doing well and making runs in the final and that helped me,” said Sameer.
The political rivalry between India and Pakistan, more often than not, spills onto the cricket field and Sarfaraz said he made sure his players did not make any vile gestures in response to their counterparts.
India skipped the customary handshakes; a practice they have been carrying on since the men’s Asia Cup T20 earlier this year while one of their batters, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, made a ‘shoe-pointing’ gesture after his dismissal.
“India’s behavior regarding the game was not good, and their players’ conduct was unethical,” he said. “But we celebrated the victory, displaying sportsman’s spirit.”