RAWALPINDI: Pakistan captain Shan Masood justified the decision to field four fast bowlers after losing the first Test of the two-match series against Bangladesh here on Sunday.
The home team played the first Test with an all-pace attack which featured Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Khurram Shehzad and Mohammad Ali.
However, Pakistan’s pace bowlers struggled during the match as Bangladesh piled up a mammoth 565 in the first innings.
The decision to field four pacers was further criticized when Bangladesh spinners Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Shakib Al Hasan dominated the final day and claimed seven wickets to bundle Pakistan for a meagre 146 in the second innings.
However, in the post-match press conference, Shan Masood defended the decision as the team expected more assistance from the pitch.
“Looking at the pitch, we expected it to do more. If we played 3 fast bowlers, we would be pushing them to the limit and the spinner would be bowling 25-30 overs a day, which we wanted to avoid,” he said.
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Shan Masood also explained the reason for not including a front-line spinner in the playing XI.
“There’s always room for a spinner but you have to look at the whole XI. We lost Aamir Jamal who offers something with both bat & ball so we had to play 4 all-out seamers,” he added.
“When we played in Sydney and we thought we needed a front-line spinner, Sajid Khan played there. We’ll assess the pitch & conditions and see the best team we can play.”
The Pakistan captain was also asked about the decision to declare the first innings at 448-6, denying Mohammad Rizwan his first double-century.
“The reason for the declaration was a positive push – to push the game forward and hopefully have a crack at them in the 4th innings,” Shan answered.
“We could have done with those runs but there were also things with the ball and in the field that we could’ve done better to either take a lead or keep them at par.”
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