Misbah-ul-Haq believes Pakistan deserves No. 1 Test ranking
After the 10-wicket win at The Oval, Pakistan’s Test captain Misbah-ul-Haq said that he believes that his country deserves to be in the number one position in the ICC Test rankings. Pakistan, who did not play a single Test match at home in more than seven years, continued to maintain their position as one of the Top-ranked Test playing nations.
Pakistan, who are currently in the third position after Australia and India, managed to make a 2-2 finish in the England Test series after Younis Khan’s stunning double century and the team now expects to move up the rankings card.
They have a chance to be in the number one position if Sri Lanka defeats Australia in the final Test of their home series and if India fails to beat West Indies. After the introduction of the Official ranking system in 2003, this would be the first time for the Pakistanis to achieve the No. 1 position if the mentioned conditions are fulfilled.
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The Pakistan team had not played a single international Test series on the home soil since Sri Lanka’s team bus in Lahore faced an armed terror attack in 2009. After this incident, they had to consider the United Arab Emirates as their home ground and played their home matches there.
The skipper of the Pakistan Test team Misbah became emotional during the post-match press conference after they defeated the English players in the last Test match and said "This team deserves that (going to number one) for six years of no cricket at home, sometimes people think it's easy - the UAE suits us, we win - but just living every day away from your country, without your family and friends, and playing every game away from Pakistan, is really difficult. It's mentally tough.”
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The captain also spoke about the emotional stress of the Pakistani players. He mentioned that he gets the chance to meet his family only once in a year and he doesn’t even get time to meet most of his friends. He hardly sees his friends as most of their matches are hosted outside the country.
He said “We are out of the country all the time. There are a lot of tours and even our home series are in the UAE. We go from West Indies to New Zealand to Australia. It's not easy. But still the team is winning. Still the team is playing competitive cricket.”
In the same press conference, the English record-breaking captain Alastair Cook said, "At the beginning of this series and at the beginning of this game, everyone was saying, 'you could become No.1'.” Cook added, "These four days are probably (an indication of) exactly where we are.”