Pakistan captain Mohammad Rizwan acknowledged that the young man opens Said Ayub’s injury affected the team’s preparations, but insisted that it was not an excuse for their poor performance in the ICC Champions Trophy 2025.
Pakistan’s last group phase match against Bangladesh was washed out due to rain on Thursday and ended their campaign without a single win. The green shirts had already suffered defeat against India and New Zealand and failed to register a victory in the tournament.
When he spoke after the match on Thursday, Rizwan admitted that the team fell under the country’s expectations, adding that Pakistan’s team combination was disturbed due to damage to Ayub and Star Batter Fakhar Zaman. However, he maintained that the team must move forward and learn from their mistakes.
“When a player who has appeared unusual in the last two to three series gets injured, it affects the team,” Rizwan said. “But as a leader, you have to look ahead. There are other players in the troop and we must not use injuries as an apology.”
Wicketkeeper batter also admitted that the team’s overall performance had been disappointing in recent weeks, but promised to analyze their mistakes and work with improvements before the upcoming White-Ball series against New Zealand next month.
“Our results in the last few weeks have been disappointing,” he said. “We wanted to work well in front of our home crowd today, but unfortunately we couldn’t. The nation has high expectations from us and we couldn’t meet them.”
Rizwan said the team had identified their deficiencies during the Champions Trophy and the recent TRI series and would work hard to tackle these problems before their next task.
“It’s frustrating. We’re here for the whole nation and we have to accept that we haven’t worked well,” he added. “The public is disappointed, and so are we. Inshaallah, we learn from our mistakes and come back stronger in future tournaments.”
