Pressure on Pak at Champs Trophy: Afridi

[Cover Drive]

Karachi: The ICC Twenty20 World Cup win will augment the expectation from Pakistan as cricketers have to handle pressure judiciously to perform well in the upcoming Champions Trophy, feels new vice-captain Shahid Afridi.

"Carrying the tag of T20 World Cup winners into Champions Trophy means there are automatically going to be a lot of expectations from us to do well. The way we won T20 World Cup means we have the ability to win the Champions Trophy, but the only thing is we have to develop mindset to handle pressure as well," Afridi said.

Afridi, who has recently been appointed as the deputy to Younis Khan for the eight-nation tournament, cast aside possibility of any conflict of idea with the skipper.

Also read:
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"The vice-captain is there to support his captain and only become effective when the captain is not available for some reason. So at the moment my focus is on continuing my good form as a player and contributing with bat and ball to the team," Afridi said.

"Having been named as vice-captain is not going to mean any additional pressure on me because I have been around for a long time and Younis is a top captain who knows how to lead the side," he added.

Both Afridi and Younis, along with Fawad Alam and Muhammad Asif appeared in a T20 tournament, organised on the occasion of Ramzan at Asghar Ali Shah Stadium on Saturday before a big crowd.

"I have been given the T20 captaincy and now made the vice-captain. This is good enough for me now. But I know my primary and most important role still remains to contribute consistently as a player," Afridi said.

Afridi termed the Champions Trophy as one of the toughest tournaments in international cricket and said, "Every match we have to play as a knockout encounter."

The tournament will commence in South Africa from September 22.

http://cricketnext.in.com/news/pressure-on-pak-at-champs-trophy-afridi/43599-13.html

[IAJ]

Preassure or no preassure: We have an even better squad now than we had in World T20 so this will be interessting InshaAllah.

[kingusama92]

There is no need to go into this tournament and think we are favorites because of a T20 win. We are most likely going to be underdogs in most of the match ups we face in this tourney.

This team is certainly look more promising then the one in the T20 format, but it will be interesting to see how fast they gel in South Africa.

It's certainly going to be an interesting Champions Trophy indeed.

[Nazir_ Rules]

Indeed it shall be fasinating to watch, and i hope inshallah pakistan win it.

[Zain]

Hope pakistan win, and i am a die hard fan but to be honest all these exuses of handling preassure are becoming a bit too much, first when were loosing they say to much expectation preassure is on them thats why they fail, now we have won the t20 world cup they are saying too much preassure again because we have won.
One of the main things that seperates the great players from the average ones is that they perform when they are in a preassure situation, so they need to stop using this as an exuse because in all honest its getting a bit pathetic.

[najam2007]

It's a very good team very balanced in bowling, all they have to perform in middle . In SA the pitches will be bouncing one which help the spinners , if the middle order batsmen click in every game , I don't see why we can be a champ!