Pakistan\u2019s Iftikhar Ahmed admitted on Wednesday his side were \u201cheartbroken\u201d and still hurting from their agonising opening defeat to arch-rivals India at the Twenty20 World Cup.
\nAn epic 82 not out from Virat Kohli powered India to a stunning last-ball win on Sunday in front of a frenzied crowd of more than 90,000 at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
\nPakistan have little room left for further error when they play Zimbabwe in Perth on Thursday, in a game they will be expected to win.
\n\u201cThe hurt remains after losing such a big match. We were heartbroken,\u201d said middle-order batsman Iftikhar, who hit 51 in Pakistan\u2019s 159-8, but it turned out to be just not quite enough.
\nIftikhar said that morale was high despite the lingering heartache and praised skipper Babar Azam for his handling of the team in the aftermath of the India loss.
\nA video of Azam\u2019s pep talk to his broken side went viral.
\n\u201cWe have to learn from our mistakes. Don\u2019t fall, the tournament has just begun. We have lost as a team and will win as a team,\u201d Azam said in the widely watched video footage.
\n\u201cThe way Babar and the management supported the players, it was good. Babar and coaches told us that \u2018it was not our last game, everybody put in the effort\u2019,\u201d Iftikhar said on Wednesday.
\n\u201cSo our morale is high.\u201d
\nPakistan will be strongly fancied to beat Zimbabwe \u2014 who are ranked 11 in the world to Pakistan\u2019s three \u2014 and belatedly get their World Cup going.
\nPakistan need a victory for their confidence too.
\n\u201cZimbabwe is an international team and we have to play strong against them like any other team,\u201d said the 32-year-old Iftikhar.
\n\u201cImportant to play well and keep up the confidence. The players are hungry to perform.\u201d
\nPace bowler Haris Rauf bowled well at the MCG until he was hit for two successive sixes by Kohli in a game-changing moment at the end of the 19th over.
\n\u201cThe Australian pitches are fast and bouncy and we have prepared for that,\u201d said Iftikhar.
\n\u201cHaris is our main strike bowler and we expect him to bowl better here and win it for Pakistan. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan\u2019s Iftikhar Ahmed admitted on Wednesday his side were \u201cheartbroken\u201d and still hurting from their agonising opening defeat to arch-rivals India at the Twenty20 World…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2162,"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-2161","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\/2161","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=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}