Nisshin, Sep 24 (IANS) Describing India as the benchmark in white-ball cricket, Pakistan men’s head coach Mike Hesson on Thursday said his side’s primary challenge is to bridge that gap in the men’s T20 event at the Asian Games.
At the Kōrogi Sports Park in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, Pakistan will launch their campaign from the quarterfinal stage against a yet-to-be-decided opponent in the multi-sport event, which kicked off on Thursday. India, the reigning two-time ICC Men’s T20 World Cup champions, are also directly seeded into the quarter-finals.
While both teams are in separate halves of the draw, a potential high-voltage clash remains on the cards in the later stages. “India are the benchmark in terms of white-ball cricket at the moment, and our challenge is to catch up to that.
“We are preparing as best as we can, and if we get an opportunity to play (India), we will certainly put them under pressure as we were able to do in the final of the Asia Cup. There is a lot of cricket to be played between now and before being able to play the final for both sides, so we are not getting too far ahead of ourselves,” Hesson was quoted as saying by the ICC on Thursday.
Pakistan’s last outing in the shortest format was during the 2026 T20 World Cup, where a narrow five-run victory over Sri Lanka was not enough to secure them a semi-final berth. “We were eighth in the world in T20 cricket when I came in and now have gone up to fifth (sixth). We have gone up 30 points, which has happened only by winning the series.
“We have won not only in Pakistan, but in Dubai and America, etc. We have won a lot of series over the last 15 months in T20 cricket, so I think it is not fair to put all three formats (in terms of form) together.
“So, we are struggling in Test cricket and in ODI cricket we are developing heading into the World Cup, and we have certainly improved our performance in the last 12 months, but we are by no means a finished product,” added Hesson.
–IANS
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