Pakistan’s India game boycott is not our concern: Max O’Dowd
The “perceived” pressure on Pakistan after deciding to boycott the game against India is of no concern to the Netherlands opener Max O’Dowd, who says his team is firmly focussed on winning its T20 World Cup opener against Salman Ali Agha’s men here on Saturday. With Pakistan boycotting their league game against India as a show of solidarity for the ousted Bangladesh, they would have to win all their remianing three games starting with the one against the Dutchmen in order to qualify for the Super Eights.
Asked if Pakistan would be under huge pressure due to the impending pull-out, O’Dowd replied: “Look, to be honest, I don’t have much to say about Pakistan boycotting against India, that’s completely out of our control. We just kind of focus on what we’re doing, what we need to do tomorrow, which is to try and beat Pakistan. “We have got three (vs USA, Namibia and India) very important games coming up after that, so we just have to play the game that’s in front of us and everything else will unfold.”
O’Dowd, who has played 87 T20I games and has a strike-rate of 122 with a century and 16 fifties, didn’t want to disclose his team’s strategy while hinting that there will be plans in place for individuals in the opposition. “I’m not going to come out here the day before a game and tell you what we’re going to exploit, there’s definitely areas that we speak about, we have our analysis meetings and there’s certain things with certain guys and that’s what we’ll try and exploit,” he said.
“But then again, you’ve got to understand, they’re very good players and sometimes plans work, sometimes they don’t, but you have to be as prepared as you can, which we feel we are.” Pakistan have four different kind of spinners — left-arm orthodox Mohammed Nawaz, right-arm leg-break Abrar Ahmed, off-spinner Saim Ayub and the surprise package — Usman Tariq, who bowls side-arm off-spin.
“Of course, they’ve got high quality spinners, thankfully we’ve spent the last month and a half working very hard on that end and facing spin in these conditions and like I said, guys have upskilled and we’ve done our homework on a lot of their spin bowlers,” said O’Dowd, who along with the squad prepared at Chennai Super Kings Academy in Chennai before the start of the tournament. “For us, it’s going to be tough of course, just like any other team that we come up against because Pakistan have got a great spinning group, but we feel confident that we can play our style and be successful.”
