Pakistan skipper Babar Azam should stand aside and give Mohammad Haris his opener slot to boost their top order firepower in Wednesday\u2019s Twenty20 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand, former captain Shahid Afridi said.
\nPakistan, the 2009 champions, looked set to exit the competition until the Netherlands pulled off a major upset by beating South Africa on Sunday.
\nMohammad Rizwan and Babar went into the tournament ranked as the top two T20 batters but neither has managed a fifty in the tournament so far.
\nRizwan has scored at a run-a-ball rate while Babar, Pakistan\u2019s premier batsman, has a strike rate of 61.90.
\nBoth will have to up their game against last year\u2019s runners-up New Zealand in the first semi-final in Sydney. India play England in the second semi in Adelaide on Thursday.
\n\u201cWe need to use Mohammad Haris with fielding restrictions. Babar Azam should drop to number three.\u201d
\nAfridi said Pakistan\u2019s top order should play with more intent and be as aggressive as middle order batters Iftikhar Ahmed and Shan Masood.
\n\u201cYou look at Iftikhar or Shan Masood and you can see their intention in their body language, that they are looking to hit the ball. We need that kind of intention, that kind of cricket.
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the point of scoring a run-a-ball 30 or 35 if you can\u2019t finish the game having used up that many deliveries?\u201d the 42-year-old added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan skipper Babar Azam should stand aside and give Mohammad Haris his opener slot to boost their top order firepower in Wednesday\u2019s Twenty20 World Cup…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2570,"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-2569","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\/2569","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=2569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}