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Sydney: The PCB might have made up its mind to appoint a specialist fielding coach for the team after the ongoing Australia series but the decision did not go well with captain Mohammad Yousuf and coach Intikhab Alam, who feels the move will hardly make any difference.
Both Yousuf and Alam were of the view that unless a player understands the significance of fielding in modern day cricket, it will be very hard for them to improve upon.
Although former captain Waqar Younis has been attached with the team in Australia as bowling and fielding coach, the PCB chairman Ejaz Butt has said it has been decided to have a permanent fielding coach with the team after the series.
But Yousuf told the media in Sydney that he did not believe that there was more the players could do to improve upon their fielding.
"Fielding is an area where individual hard work matters a lot and some players are born outstanding fielders. We are already practicing lot of fielding drills all the time," Yousuf said.
"In the past also we have hired fielding coaches like Jonty Rhodes in 2006 but nothing much came from it," he noted, adding, "Whoever comes will do the same kind of practices and throw lots of catches which is already happening now," he said.
Incidentally, on recent tours Pakistan also had a local fielding coach in Mohtashim Rasheed. But he was removed after the ODI series loss at the hands of New Zealand in Abu Dhabi.
Pakistan coach Alam pointed out that unless the players are passionate about fielding from their early days, it would be difficult to push them when they graduate to the international level.
"We need to change the way we approach fielding drills and catching practice sessions at the domestic level. Players need to understand how costly one dropped catch can be in a match.
"We dropped both the Australian openers in Melbourne and they went onto score nineties," he noted.
Alam, who is under fire for not contributing enough to the team as its chief coach, said his players did a lot of fielding practice with the coaches.
"I'm not going to make any excuses about the conditions, the crowds and how we might not be used to it. There are some youngsters, some new guys. The department is such that if you work hard at it you can really improve.
"We have hours of practice where we practice slip catches, high balls, flat ones, diving ones, running ones. We cover everything but I've been saying for a long time, it is a grassroot problem," he said.
He pointed out that Pakistan had also produced some outstanding and natural fielders in Javed Miandad, Wasim Raja, Asif Iqbal, Imran Nazir etc.
