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Pakistan skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq is a man who would rarely speak his mind. He is a man of few words and likes to answer questions fired by the media with a brief response or even a shrug of the shoulder.

But ask him about Pakistan’s mission impossible, finding a reliable opening pair, and he would be a different man. It was the look on his face that changed first. From being non-committal and evasive in answering some of the questions, Inzamam suddenly wanted to share his feelings. It’s certainly one issue that has been bothering him for sometime.

“What can we do,” he asked in response to a question on why Pakistan have been unable to find good openers following the exit of players like Saeed and Aamer. “We have given a chance to almost every opener who has done well in first-class matches. We have tried everything. We have even brought Shoaib Malik from the middle order and turned him into an opener. It worked but unfortunately we lost him for this series because of fitness problems,” he said.

Shoaib Malik played in a couple of warm-up games on this tour earlier this summer but an elbow problem forced him to fly back home before the start of the Test series. Pakistan have tried three different combinations in the last three Tests against England and would be going with yet another pair in the fourth Test starting at The Oval from today.

Inzamam is not pleased with the way young openers Salman Butt, Imran Farhat and Taufeeq Umar have played in this series but he is still backing them. “Opening is a difficult job and it gets even tougher when playing in England,” he said.

Inzamam is hoping that Mohammad Hafeez, who is set to open the innings for Pakistan at The Oval with Imran Farhat would fare better than Butt or Taufeeq. “Hafeez has done well in Australia recently and we are confident he would come out with a good performance here,” said Inzamam referring to Hafeez’s good outing for Pakistan A in Australia earlier this summer.

Source:The News

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