Captain believes veteran pacer will come up with a good performance in last-four clash.
Pakistan cricket team captain Babar Azam has backed veteran pacer Hasan Ali to bounce back ahead of the International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 World Cup 2021 semi-final against Australia.
The 27-year-old has come under scrutiny after a series of under-par performances in the ongoing competition.
Even though Hasan has managed to claim five wickets in as many matches but he is the most expensive out of all the Pakistan bowlers in the tournament with an economy-rate of 8.57.
Babar, while talking in a virtual press conference as quoted in a report by Cricket Pakistan, called Islamabad United’s pacer ‘a match-winner’.
“Hasan Ali is our main bowler and a match-winner,” he said. “He has helped us win tournaments in the past. We will back him and I’m sure that being a big match player, he will come up with a good performance in the semi-final and final.”
The Men-in-Green have had a perfect time so far in the competition, winning all five matches, but one area of concern could be the slow start to their innings where they’ve managed to score at a run-rate of just 5.83.
Babar, while talking about that, insisted that the plan is to score at least 40 to 50 runs in the powerplay.
“Sometimes we aren’t able to execute our plans because of the conditions,” he said. “But we always try to score around 40-50 runs in the powerplay. Even if we aren’t able to do that, the good thing is that we don’t lose wickets and since we bat deep, our power hitters can utilise the remaining overs.”