Srinagar: Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram has slammed current Pakistan cricket team for its fitness standards and termed it as one of main reasons for early exit from T20 World Cup 2024.
“I haven’t talked much about this yet, and I don’t have any inside news, but I knew about it two years ago — cricketers aren’t focusing enough on their fitness,” Akram said.
“Now, during the [T20] World Cup, the whole world saw just how good the fitness of our cricket team truly was.”
Wasim Akram then drew a comparison of the accessibility of information available regarding fitness during his cricket-playing days and today, stating that he would be well aware of it if he was playing currently.
“If I was playing cricket today, I’d have a lot of knowledge about fitness, as it’s now common,” stated Akram.
“During the time we played cricket, information about fitness wasn’t common. We didn’t know much, so we simply followed our seniors like Imran Khan and Javed Miandad. Whatever they did, we did exactly the same.”
Earlier this week, another former Pakistan captain Salman Butt raised concerns regarding the fitness of the national cricket team.
“Improvements will be seen in fitness soon. You cannot say all the players are not fit. If you look at some of the players they are among the top 10 players in terms of fitness in World cricket. You can look at Shan Masood, Fakhar Zaman, and Mohammad Rizwan, you look at their fitness, they have achieved good scores in the Yo-Yo Tests. They are good in the gym, they run well on the field,” stated Butt.