Bashar DID set good fields

[al Furqaan]

in retrospect, i will say that bashar did the right thing in not setting an attacking field and settling for stopping the boundaries.

other than rafiq and masri, we don't have bowlers who can dominate batsmen, certainly not those of the calibre of the aussies. so settling on minimizing damage was good.

remember in ODIs, scoring rate is more important than taking wickets. in tests wickets are important even if u bleed runs. and we would have given runs had we tried to take aussie wickets. true they were under pressure, but clarke and martin are good bats.

in the end bashar's not-so-gamble paid off. we kept em to under 250, and chased a chasable target.

had bashar set his field the way we wanted to, australia would have finished their innings at best at 280-8. no one knows if we could have chased that, but certainly chasing 250 is easier than 281 or even more.

bashar may not be dynamic, and we will lose games due to his conservative captaincy. but the games like this make it worthwhile.