Q. Batting's improved. Bowling's improved. How about the dropped catches? Why still so many dropped catches? MICKEY ARTHUR: That's the million dollar question. We train and we train and we train, and we've put in massive amounts of work. That's something we'll be exploring again in the next couple of days because we can't be dropping that many catches and expect to beat teams getting into almost a knockout phase for us.
So that's something we're going to have to keep working at and keep chipping at.
Q. After winning today's match, where do you see this Pakistan team? And also, any specific reason you didn't select Shoaib Malik?
MICKEY ARTHUR: Yeah, I didn't hear the start part of your question.
Q. After winning today's match, where do you see this Pakistan team in the World Cup?
MICKEY ARTHUR: We are very firmly in the World Cup. We win our next three games, we'll qualify. So we know that.
Today, I thought we got our bowling and batting spot-on. Our problem is we haven't put three disciplines together yet in any game. So as the gentleman pointed out: We bowled well; we batted well; we didn't field well today. So when we put three disciplining together, we'll be exceptional. The closest we've got was when we beat England.
And in terms of Shoaib, we went with Shoaib for three games. We gave him a good extended run. We thought Shoaib with his experience, really thought he had a burn to come and end his ODI career in a very, very special way. It didn't pan out for him, but he certainly tried. He's put in tremendous amounts of work, and we banked on having some experience at six. But today we shuffled it around and I thought we got quite a nice balance.
Q. It was a year ago that you compared Babar Azam to Virat Kohli. In this tournament a lot of commentators have been praising his talent. But why is very often he is unable to convert the 50s into 100s?
MICKEY ARTHUR: Look, I think as I've always said, and Babar is an unbelievable player and Babar will just get better and better and better. I think his game over the last year has improved considerably.
He's going to be right up there as one of Pakistan's great batsmen, I think. But he's played well. Today he tried to force the pace just a little bit when it was probably needed and got out. There's going to be other days where he follows through and makes it happen.
Babs is the glue that sort of bonds our batting together. If Babar applies well, we invariably get to where we need to be. We feel if we get up to the 300s, we can defend that out eight of ten times.
Q. Today's win, do you think it's the start of Pakistan's revival at this World Cup? And secondly the way you have been dropping catches, do you think that you can beat a side like New Zealand with this kind of fielding?
MICKEY ARTHUR: I know we can beat New Zealand. It's amazing what a difference a week makes. Our boys hurt this week, all of us hurt, incredibly. Guys didn't sleep much, but they came to the training every day and put in, in order to try and turn it around, and today we got some just reward.
We are alive and kicking, without a doubt, and we play our best game, we beat anybody. Whether that's New Zealand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, our remaining games, or England, we showed. We put our three disciplines together, we are as good as any team in this competition.
Q. Just wanted to ask a little bit about what you made of Amir in this tournament. He's been a very different Amir to maybe what people remember and what people think about, but he's been smart.
MICKEY ARTHUR: He's been?
Q. He's been smart.
MICKEY ARTHUR: I think we've always said that, and whenever we've spoken, we've spoken about Amir being a very smart bowler. He backs his skills. His skills are excellent, and he works incredibly hard.
The key today is he's got a little bit of pace back. He's bowling with a confidence that he didn't have, and you guys are very quick to point out, he had five wickets, he had a strike rate of 121 since Champions Trophy, and that waned, his confidence waned and waned and waned.
He's got that spring back in his step. He's starting to swing the ball again. He's starting to bowl with a little bit of extra pace. I see the glint in his eye, and that's really good, and that's just confidence.
Our guys need to be built up all the time. The minute they are bashed, like they have been the last week, our guys don't respond to that in a very kind way, and hopefully we got a performance out today that vindicates the talent the boys have on the team.
Q. Good knock by Haris, but one thing was very visible, the stamina. He stepped in after 30th over and after spending 60, 70 minutes, he looked exhausted and in last overs, he couldn't make to the century; as well, we have three wickets in hands in last three overs we only made 20 runs, what is the problem?
MICKEY ARTHUR: Who is that? Haris? I thought you were saying something positive about Haris.
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