Waqar offers no excuses for Pakistan's exit

Pakistan captain Waqar Younis offered no excuses as his team made an early exit from the Morocco Cup Sunday.

"I have no excuses to offer. The simple fact is that we played poorly throughout the tournament. The bowling was better but it was the batting that let us down in the competition. We tried our best but things just didn't work," Waqar said in a post-match conference Sunday evening.

Pakistan lost three of the four matches after starting the competition as odds-on favourites following their sequence of impressive victories since the tour to England last year that led to triumphs in two tournaments and four one-day series.

"We are sad and bitterly disappointed. It was not a result we were expecting. But there is nothing to get panic about as this is the first tournament in over a year that we have lost. We are confident that we will manage to lift ourselves for future assignments though at the moment, the morale of the team is really down," he said.

It is hard to believe that with Wasim Akram coming out to bat at No 10, Pakistan failed to get 197 for victory against South Africa the other day after Shahid Afridi had placed them at 92 for two in 18 overs with a whirlwind innings.

"We lost the momentum after Shahid's dismissal. I think the turning point was the dismissals of Yousuf Youhana and Younis Khan off successive deliveries. At one stage, we had bonus point in our range but we lost our way with those two wickets and then the unfortunate dismissal of Inzamam-ul-Haq was the final nail in the coffin.

"Yousuf played a poor shot but rest of the wickets were due to good bowling by South Africa," Waqar said.

The skipper defended the team selection and decision to send Shahid at one-down position after having demoted to No 9 a day earlier against Sri Lanka.

"Sending Imran Nazir and Shahid would have led to a chaos because they are hard-hitting batsmen and we were chasing a small total. Saqlain Mushtaq was a touch and go decision and in the end we preferred to include Shoaib Malik to give depth in the batting because we didn't know what total we might have to chase," Waqar said.

The pacer, who finished with 11 wickets in the tournament, admitted that so much talent also sometimes becomes a problem in the backdrop of his strategy of rotating the players.

"We are rotating players because there is too much cricket ahead and I believe that one-day cricket is now allrounders dominated game. You look at Sri Lanka and South Africa, they have more allrounders than any other team," he argued.

Whatever might Waqar feel, the simple fact is that Pakistan got the team composition wrong throughout the tournament. Playing with just five bowlers was always expected to be a gamble that continued to backfire, particularly in the last two matches. Pakistan reduced Sri Lanka to 53 for three but allowed them to reach 242 while against South Africa, Pakistan reduced them to 49 for five but failed to capitalize.

"Shoaib Akhtar's return will definitely bring more firepower in our bowling for the upcoming tournaments, Waqar said.

After Shahid's onslaught, Youhana and Inzamam got ultra cautious and allowed South Africa to tighten the screws around them. The two batsmen added just 28 runs from 71 balls after Shahid's dismissal instead of rotating the strike.