KARACHI: Pakistan, the former ICC World Twenty20 champions, are working on training their talented youth in hopes of recapturing the title in Sri Lanka next year.Pakistan won the title in England in 2009 which they had previously lost to India in the inaugural edition. However, they failed to defend their title and lost to Australia in the semi-finals of the 2010 World Twenty20 in the Caribbean.Despite being inferior to the big teams in Test and ODI cricket, Pakistan is quite successful in the shortest format of the game.However, due to the absence of players like Shahid Afridi, Mohamad Aamir, Abdul Razzaq, Pakistan’s Twenty20 squad can be said to be suffering from a lack of depth that it boasted of back in 2009.But cricket officials are still optimistic about the country’s Twenty20 future. Intikhab Alam, the team’s manager, expressed the hope that by training the players they can be confident of a good result in next year’s Twenty20 World Cup.“We are in the process of making our plans for next year’s Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and are confident of preparing the team well,” Alam said while talking to a local English daily.Pakistan’s recent domestic Twenty20 tournament in Faisalabad highlighted the likes of Ramiz Raja Jr, Asad Shafiq, Ahmed Shehzad, Shahzeb Hasan, Sohail Khan and Shoaib Malik who all put up impressive performances which give reason to be hopeful about next year’s World Cup.“Twenty20 is mostly a young man’s game,” Alam said.“You have to have young guys who can hit the ball out of the park. You need guys who can really fight even while defending small totals. You need guys who are exceptionally good fielders. I’m sure that Pakistan currently has plenty of such guys.Alam, who is running the fast-track coaching project at the National Cricket academy in Lahore, said that the first phase revealed some players which can be included in the national squad.“Several of the youngsters who featured in the first phase look seem to be really good and we can even blood some of them in our national Twenty20 squad,” he added.
