Former Pakistan pacer Mohammad Amir has advised openers Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan to play with a positive mindset, ahead of Pakistan’s likely T20 World Cup semi-final against Australia.

Amir said that Pakistan openers needs to attack the Aussie bowlers from ball one rather than adopting a conservation approach.

“The mindset of teams, especially in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, is to post a score around 160 and in order to do that you need to take advantage of the powerplay. If you look at the match against Namibia, despite the fact that they didn’t have any world class bowlers, Pakistan didn’t utilise the powerplay properly and tried to make up for it at the back end of the innings,” said Amir on his official YouTube channel.

“However, Australia won’t let you do that. They won’t concede 60 runs in the last four overs so Pakistan needs to ensure that they play attacking cricket from ball one. If you go in survival mode against top sides at the beginning, they won’t give you margin to make a comeback later in the match. We need to score atleast 35-40 runs in the powerplay in order to score 160 plus,” he added.  

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The left-armer also believes that Pakistan’s real test in the ongoing T20 World Cup will begin from the semi-final against Australia.  

“Pakistan’s real test will now begin because, in my opinion, the only team which could have given tough time to Pakistan in the group stage was India as we know the conditions in UAE very well,” he said.

“Australia have been playing some good cricket and Pakistan needs to be on top of their game to beat them. Chasing [against West Indies] 160 in 16 overs for the loss of two wickets is no joke, it means that they [Australia] are in good rhythm,” he concluded.