A disappointing start to the World Cup

It was a terribly disappointing day for us against India and not the start that we dreamed off when we headed to the ground this morning. We didn’t play to our potential in any aspect of the game and it really was a very bad day at the office.

I think the pressure of the occasion got to us, with all our players making their debut in a World Cup, and that was shown through some poor shot selection by the top-order batting. In the warm-up game against New Zealand, who I think is a similar standard to India, we showed that we can make runs against the best teams which makes it even more disappointing to not get the result that we wanted to today.

At 25 for 7 I really feared what would happen, but at least our eighth-wicket partnership added some runs to our total. We also didn’t bowl as well as we know we can, so we have to improve our performance in all aspects of our game in the next matches.

This afternoon we spent some time practising on the outfield to try and restore some of our confidence, just getting the feel of the ball on the middle of the bat.

It might not seem much, but just getting your confidence back and proving to yourself that you are capable of scoring runs is important when you have suffered a heavy defeat.

We know the result won’t be received particularly well back at home, particularly as it was against India, but we hope that people in Pakistan continue supporting us.

We were lucky enough to have some very vocal backing at the match today from quite a few Pakistani supporters and they have said they will be coming to watch our vital match against Sri Lanka on Monday.

The last time a Pakistan side came to Australia for a World Cup in cricket, they didn’t get off to a very good start and went onto win the men’s event in 1992, so hopefully we can use that team as an inspiration to improve our performances later in the tournament. I am very confident that we can bounce back against Sri Lanka and get through to the Super Sixes.

Despite all the disappointment, it was still very special to play my first match at a World Cup and also to be at Bowral, the home of Sir Donald Bradman, and one of the greatest players to play the sport.

If only we could have batted like him during the match, things could have been very different!