Pakistan must play in same positive manner as India: Afridi

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Karachi: Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi has said that the national team needs to adopt and play in the same positive manner as the Indian team is doing currently.
Talking to reporters in Lahore, where he is training at the National Cricket Academy, the former Pakistan skipper said there was a time when the Indians were derided for not playing positive cricket.
"Today things are different. The present Indian team has changed its approach and is playing positive cricket with an aggressive approach," he said.
"The Indians have basically learnt and adopted the Australian approach of playing positive cricket. That is why they are enjoying such success," Afridi added.
He said the Pakistan team also needed to adapt the same approach if it wanted to achieve good results.
"I believe in positive competition and professional jealousy that is how one improves his game," he said.
Pakistan lost all three of their group matches in the recently-concluded Champions Trophy, drawing criticism and flak from the cricket community for their poor batting performance.
Some changes are expected in the side when the squad for the West Indies tour is announced.
Afridi, who was dropped from Pakistan's Champions Trophy squad, insisted that his career was not over and he wanted to continue playing for the country in ODIs and T20s games.
"I want to be playing for Pakistan and I want to do well. I still believe that I am still better than a lot of other players," he said.
Afridi pointed out that people in Pakistan have short memories and they tend to forget a player's contribution.
"They only talk about a bad series but forget about what a player has done in the past for his country," he said.
In the 21 ODIs he has played since January 2012, Afridi has picked up 15 wickets at 57.13 and scored 308 runs at 19.25. While he is an automatic choice in the Twenty20 squad, he last made an ODI comeback on the tour to South Africa earlier this year, where he remained wicketless and scored 126 in four innings with a high score of 88.
Afridi said he still had the desire and skills to make it to the Pakistan team.
"I am doing my best and working hard in the nets at the National Cricket Academy over the past two-three weeks. I have been working on many areas of my game and I want to play both forms (ODI and T20) of the game," he insisted.