Arthur slams fielding effort

Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur has laid into his team’s fielding effort after a shambolic display at the SCG allowed Australia to canter to a huge total.

The visitors dropped no fewer than four catches and allowed Australia to pick up extra runs with some terrible misfields to boot.

The four dropped catches cost Pakistan a total of 149 runs and that is before you factor in the misfields.

The biggest offenders were Pakistan’s stars with bat and ball with Sharjeel Khan who made 74 dropping two chances while Hasan Ali who claimed a five for also grassing a brace of chances.

Arthur said after the loss: “We just can’t give chances like that.

“Certainly, the standards we set for this cricket team haven’t been met in the field. So that’s really disappointing.

“(Dropped catches) allows them to push out at the back end. Maxwell should have been out, Head should have been out, which meant that we would have had two new batsmen there all the time.

“Those are the kinds of things we just can’t afford to do. If we want to get to where we want to get to in terms of rankings, we just can’t make those errors.

“Had we taken those catches, those players wouldn’t have been at the wicket to take toll of those last couple of overs.

“Batting and bowling I can sit with tonight and take some positives out of it. Fielding (was) woeful and way below standard.”

The coach conceded that he told his troops before the match that he believed Australia earned 15-20 per match from fielding and fitness but believes that difference was blown out even more in this contest.

Arthur added: “I said to the guys yesterday in our team meeting that I think Australia are 15-20 runs better than us in those departments … and tonight they were 50 runs better.

“And you just can’t compete if that’s the case.

“(I’m) incredibly frustrated. And it’s not through a lack of hard work; the guys have trained and trained and trained and somewhere between the training and going out on the ground, it’s seemed to get lost.

“So we’ll just keep pursuing that and keep endeavouring to get better and better because we have to.

“The gap between the best sides in the world and where we sit at the moment is not great in terms of batting and bowling, but in terms of fielding, athleticism, fitness, running between the wickets, the gap is massive.

“Those are issues we continually talk about and continually train for, but we’re just going to have to do it harder and harder.”

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