Collective effort, the key to beat India: Inzamam

According to ESPNCricinfo, Inzamam, who is now Pakistan's batting consultant, asked his batters to be ‘aggressive' against the hosts, when they tour here later this month. The batting stalwart said the Indians handle pressure better.

Inzamam-ul-Haq during a media briefing in Lahore. Pic/AFP

To prepare for the high-octane series, Pakistan are holding a conditioning camp at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore where Inzamam is assisting the batsmen for a week. Since his retirement in 2007, the former middle-order batsman wasn't associated with the Pakistan cricket team, but he took up the job of batting consultant.

"My job will be to pass on my experience to the players, rather than working on batsmen's techniques," Inzamam said after the day's training. "I will be discussing with them how to chase, how to set a target and what's required while batting," he added. Pakistan will start their tour with two T20 internationals, followed by three one-day internationals.

Inzamam, who led Pakistan in 22 one-dayers against India (won 12 and lost 10), feels his country has more than one match-winners in the squad, but they need a collective effort against India. u00a0"Pakistan have a lot of players who could individually win matches for us, it's a good sign. But cricket is a team game, we lack in collective effort from the batsmen. Our bowling is very strong and we have to have confidence in ourselves.

We have to make up our minds that we can win. Playing in Indian conditions isn't different; we have been winning (there) and can win again. It's only about pressure and how to handle it. What we need is to play aggressively and whoever copes with it (pressure) well, will play better." Pakistan's batting has been a concern for them. In 2012, they lost four out of eight matches while chasing and failed to defend their target six out of eight times.

"It's not a new problem; it's been going on for a long time now. For the last two years we have not played a lot of cricket and the batsmen are lacking in temperament due to T20 cricket," Inzamam said.u00a0"Flaws in our players are down to us not playing on a regular basis. If we start playing 10-12 Tests every year, you will obviously see an improvement in our batting. The more we play cricket, the more players will learn from it," he said. u00a0