'T20 cricket is not about just wild hitting'

KARACHI: Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf says wild hitting will not make a batsman successful in Twenty20 cricket rather technically sound players would score more runs.
    
"I don't think T20 cricket is that difficult. There is no need for proper fielding, neither does anyone think much about where to place the ball. But I am firm that even in this form of the game you need to play sensibly," Yousuf said.
    
"At the moment, whoever wants to play just goes there and slogs it out. However, in the Indian Premier League we saw that proper batsmen scored more runs because in any form of the sport whoever plays properly he will score runs whether it Test cricket, ODI's or T20," he added.
    
The prolific batsman cited example of T20 World Cup match between India and Pakistan where his team fell short of the target as their batsmen failed owing to bad selection of shots.
    
"You can score eight to nine runs in an over and occasionally 20 runs. Look at the World Cup final, we needed to score 154, we had available deliveries but not enough batsmen. This was because we were in a hurry.
    
"If a batsman plays T20 properly, considering the easy wickets nowadays, getting seven to eights runs per over in the start is not that difficult and towards the end you can hit 15 to 20 runs per over," he said.

"So I don't think we need sloggers in the team to hit the ball wildly. We should learn from the IPL and international matches that proper batsmen always prevail over sloggers," he said in an apparent jibe at the selectors for ignoring him for Twenty20 cricket.
    
Yousuf, who has played just one Twenty20 game for Pakistan despite a splendid record in Test and one-day internationals, has been included in a list of probables for a Twenty20 four nation tournament in Toronto next month.
    
He will lead the Lahore Eaglets team in the national T20 championship starting from October 4 in Lahore and said the event would be an opportunity to prepare for the Toronto event.
    
"The tournament is important as we have to go to Toronto so it will be good for the players who are in contention for the Toronto tournament. So this event is good preparation for the Toronto series," he said.