Axar Patel press conference: “We see them as a team, we don’t see a rivalry” after India beat Pakistan
Captain Rashid Khan remained hopeful despite the uncertainty. “Hope for the best. Yes, (we) still have a bit of hope, we can get to the next stage and we just need to come with a positive mindset (against Canada),” Rashid said at the post-match presentation. “The next match, you never know, it’s a T20 game, we’ll have to come up with a good brand of cricket. Even if we don’t make it to the next round, we want to play the same brand of cricket and make the country and our people proud and happy.” Rashid said he was delighted to get points on the board after a heartbreaking loss to South Africa in a match decided in the second Super Over. “I’m glad we ended up winning, it’s important to have points in the T20 World Cup. It was a good effort to restrict them (UAE) to 160, we pulled things back but we didn’t do well in the first 10 overs. That’s been a problem for us in all the games and something we need to work on,” he said. “We know how aggressive (Rahmanullah Gurbaz) is. He goes with a positive mindset – it doesn’t always work, but it’s good for the team when he gets going. We have quite a lot of experience, Azmat (Azmatullah Omarzai) has played a lot, (Mohammad) Nabi is the most experienced person in the team. That’s always good to experience.” Man of the match Azmatullah Omarzai, who returned figures of 4/15 from four overs and hit 40 not out from 21 balls, explained his approach. “I tried to bowl a hard length and hit the pitch hard. It was funny, the first ball was a goal but the ball didn’t go. I took four wickets again. That first goal took a toll on us. “When I went to bat, I looked at the scoreboard. There were a lot of balls for us (from left). We needed to play straight and rotate the strike and I was talking to my partner (to) just play straight and we were waiting for the wrong ball. “It was a good game where everyone did really well and everyone worked hard (against South Africa) but the result didn’t go our way but we came back really well and we hope to do it again in the next game.