Confident that Pakistan will qualify for 2017 Champions Trophy: Waqar Younis

Speaking ahead of their upcoming tour of Sri Lanka, Pakistan coach Waqar Younis has said that he is confident regarding their qualification for the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy. Pakistan’s tour of Sri Lanka consists of 3 Tests, 5 One Day Internationals (ODIs) and 2 Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is).

With Pakistan currently languishing at No.9 in the ICC ODI rankings, they have to necessarily beat Sri Lanka in the ODI series in order to move up the rankings and play in the next edition of the Champions Trophy as only the top 8 teams feature in the quadrennial event. With the cut-off date for the 2017 edition being September 30 of this year, there is not much time available.

While success in the ODI series will be a must for the Pakistanis, Younis added that they hope to achieve the targets they have set for themselves in Tests too.

"We have set targets for Tests as well as one-day series and hope that the team does well on the tour to achieve the targets and I am confident that we will qualify for the Champions Trophy," Younis said.

While the Pakistani players are always under pressure to perform, Younis himself has quite a bit to prove after a relatively fallow period under his tenure so far.

"As a coach there is always pressure on you, it's there even when you are winning. Unfortunately we have lost five series but you must consider a lot of factors - the biggest of them all was losing Saeed Ajmal," Waqar added.

Ajmal’s absence is undoubtedly a big blow for the visitors, but Younis acknowledged that there would be no excuses as Sri Lanka are also going through a rebuilding phase following the retirement of Mahela Jayawardene from all formats and Kumar Sangakkara from ODI cricket.

"They (Sri Lanka) lost some of their senior players and we have also lost some seniors so it will take time to rebuild the one-day teams, but a tour to Sri Lanka is always tough," he concluded.