Difficult to improve ranking without home series: Misbah

KARACHI: “For a country like Pakistan, it becomes difficult to improve our ranking because we haven’t played at home since 2009,” said Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq, while expressing his support to the current ranking system employed by the International Cricket Council. 
“I think the system is fair and objective. It takes into consideration home and away matches.”
The Pakistan captain, who engineered a 3-0 test whitewash of England earlier this year,  dismissed suggestions that England did not deserve their number one test status.
He backed the world’s top-ranked side to bounce back in Sri Lanka because of the strength of their bowlers.
After losing all three tests to Pakistan in the UAE, Andrew Strauss and his men were also humbled by Sri Lanka in their opening test last week and need a quick reaction for the second test starting in Colombo on Tuesday.
“They became the number one test side after playing well not only at home but in Australia and other countries. But they are in danger of losing their number one ranking if they don’t comeback in Sri Lanka,” Misbah said.
“England has a top class bowling attack and when you have quality bowlers at your disposal you can always make a strong comeback in any conditions,” Misbah told Reuters in an interview.
“The pitches in Dubai when we played them were more difficult for batting. The pitches are better in Sri Lanka so England can come back. They lost to Sri Lanka in one session. They need to focus on the test session by session. When we played them it was a session-to-session battle for us because we knew they were a dangerous side and their bowlers were very good.”
England’s main downfall has been their batsmen’s inability to play spin effectively.
“They are competent against spinners in England but they struggle due to the different conditions they find in the subcontinent or recently in UAE,” Misbah added.
“The reason is that their batsmen play in the Asian region only after long gaps.”