Mohsin admits tough competition exists in Pak cricket

Karachi, Feb 1(ANI): Pakistan's interim coach Mohsin Khan has admitted that there is stiff competition in the squad for the final eleven ahead of the third test against England.

He added that making Pakistan's cricket competitive was his priority during his tenure as chief selector to ensure that the team had a back-up for every position and no player maintained a comfort zone mentality.

"When I came into the role of Chairman of Selectors my priority was to have more competition for places and an environment where nobody felt that they were an automatic selection. An environment where a player knew that if he was struggling for form or fitness then a suitable back up was ready to take his place," Pak Passion.net quoted Mohsin, as saying.

"I wanted to have a backup for every position in the team and wanted to eradicate the comfort zone mentality and ensure that a ready-made replacement was there if a spot in the starting eleven became available," he added.

He lauded Pakistan's cricketer Abdur Rehman who recorded the best test scores in the Abu Dhabi game.

"There is a lot of healthy competition now in Pakistan cricket for places in the starting eleven in every format. Abdur Rehman is a perfect example of this way of thinking, he knows that he has worked extremely hard to get to the level he is at now and that he has no intention of letting his form dip and his fitness levels to drop," he added.

Mohsin rejected claims that Pakistan's batting was one dimensional and negative.

"I've been hearing and reading criticism of the Pakistani batting line up about it not being up to the mark and the lack of big scores. I agree to a certain extent that our batsmen did not go on and make a big score in Abu Dhabi but you have to realise that the opposition contains 6 top class batsmen in their ranks, professional, talented and experienced players, yet they struggled on that type of surface, so let's put things into perspective before criticising the Pakistani batsmen about their strike rates," he added. (ANI)