Defiant Pakistan captain Babar Azam declared on Friday that \u201crecords are meant to be broken\u201d as his team looks to break free of India\u2019s World Cup stranglehold when the bitter rivals clash on Saturday. India boast a 7-0 record over their neighbours in World Cups despite Pakistan having a healthy 73-56 overall advantage since their first one-day international clash back in 1978. \u201cI don\u2019t focus on the past,\u201d said Azam on Friday. \u201cLet\u2019s focus on the thing to come as we know records are meant to be broken.\u201d \u201cWe will try to play well and it all depends on how you play on the day, just like we did in the first two matches,\u201d added the skipper whose side have two wins from two at the World Cup after seeing off the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. Azam said he has told his players that Saturday\u2019s clash inside the 132,000-capacity Ahmedabad stadium is a \u201cgolden opportunity\u201d to write their names into World Cup folklore. \u201cThe India-Pakistan match is a big game, high intensity. Every such game is challenging,\u201d added Azam, a survivor of the 2019 World Cup clash in Manchester which India won by 89 runs. \u201cI have told (the players) it\u2019s the best opportunity to perform. It is a big stadium that can accommodate many fans, it\u2019s a golden opportunity for us to perform in front of these fans.\u201d Under Azam, Pakistan broke a Twenty20 World Cup sequence of five defeats (from 2007 to 2016) against India with a 10-wicket rout at Dubai in 2021. \u201cDidn\u2019t we break the Twenty20 record? I am not worried about the past.\u201d Azam also shrugged off the prospect of having virtually all of the 132,000 spectators screaming support for India with no Pakistan fans having been successful in securing visas to cross the border. \u201cIt\u2019s not pressure,\u201d said Azam. \u201cWe have played at big stadiums like at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). \u201cBut, yes, all the support, I think, in Ahmedabad will be for India. It would have been better had Pakistan fans been allowed. \u201cBut I expect fans will also support us as well.\u201d Pakistan fans from around the world have faced visa glitches due to strained relations between the two countries, who have not played a bilateral cricket series since 2007. Pakistan did tour India for limited-over matches in 2012 but that did not revive full tours which stalled in the wake of the Mumbai attacks in 2008. Azam admitted conditions in Ahmedabad are different from those at Hyderabad where Pakistan played two warm-up matches and their first two World Cup games. \u201cYes, the conditions here are different,\u201d said Azam whose team beat the Netherlands by 81 runs and Sri Lanka by six wickets. \u201cYou are better off at a venue where you have spent a few days but we will adapt.\u201d Azam admitted Pakistan will look for wickets from pace spearhead Shaheen Shah Afridi who has yet to fully fire at the tournament. Shaheen has just two wickets from two matches at a cost of 113 runs. \u201cHe is our main bowler. Shaheen himself has a belief that he is a big match bowler,\u201d said the captain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defiant Pakistan captain Babar Azam declared on Friday that \u201crecords are meant to be broken\u201d as his team looks to break free of India\u2019s World…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10419,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}