Harris Sohail needs to stamp his authority on this side

Cricketer are often judged on their talents. This is why Umer Akmal has made yet another comeback to the national side. However, at least batting requires a lot more than talent. It requires temperament, game awareness, courage, over-coming your ego and fitness. There is little doubt that Haris Sohail has what it takes to succeed at the highest level. He has shown it against top quality opposition. What he has lacked is perhaps fitness and that little bit of gall.

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Almost every time Haris walks out to bat, he is making a comeback to the side. After Misbah and Younus Khan, exited the ODI scene, Haris was the appointed successor but a long term injury kept him out of the game. Pakistan had someone settled on the pairing of Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in the middle order. Babar Azam made number 3 position his own. So despite Harris’s obvious strengths, the team management made a bit of a meal of the situation. If Mohammad Hafeez doesn’t bowl, there is no way he gets ahead of the Haris. Except that Mickey Arthur hasn’t been able to break this culture of seniority bring security with the team.

With Hafeez and Babar, Haris is getting his chance at 3. Team management shouldn’t change his position now and he should focus on scoring big runs. In the 1^st game, he got a beautiful 100. While, the state of our batting line 280 is almost always acceptable, may be Haris could have teed off a bit earlier. With the easy loss, his 100 would be forgotten. He needs to make sure, that his knocks are match winning ones or when the main players come back he might find himself back on the bench.