Despite the common misconceptions about Pakistani pacers, Hasan Ali is not particularly interested in hitting the 150kph mark. He reassures that none of his teammates are either.
During the press conference after Day 1 of the Boxing Day Test against Australia in Melbourne, he stated, “I don’t know whose pace has dropped as my focus has never been just on pace. I’ve never bowled at 150kph. I think it’s better to stick to the area around the top of off stump. I haven’t heard these rumors about pace dropping, and we don’t care about them. Our focus is on the game and that’s where it should be.”
Former World Cup winner with Pakistan, Waqar Younis, recently expressed his concerns about the current crop of Pakistan quicks, saying, “Another thing that I’m worried about is that always when we come to Australia, one thing that excites is the fast bowling and this time around I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing medium pacers or slow medium pacers, allrounders, there’s no real pace. People used to come and watch Pakistan pace bowlers really running in hard and bowling 150 clicks. That’s what I’m not seeing there.”
Touring Australia for a three-match Test series, Pakistan have been without the services of young pace sensation Naseem Shah as well as Haris Rauf.
On Tuesday, after Pakistan managed to keep Australia at 187/3 at Stumps, Hasan Ali was optimistic about Pakistan’s chances in the ongoing game.
“It was a good day as a bowling unit. We were a bit unlucky, we haven’t got a lot of wickets but the best thing is we did not give them enough runs. I think we are a bit ahead of them. We’re looking forward to tomorrow. We’ll bowl them out to minimum runs,” he said.
Having won the toss and opted to bowl first, Pakistan got their breakthroughs via Hasan Ali, Salman Agha, and Aamer Jamal. The visitors managed to remove David Warner, Usman Khawaja, and Steve Smith. Having gone 1-0 down in the series following the Perth Test, the ongoing game will be the last chance for Pakistan to keep the fate of the series alive.