Pakistan has already lost the five-match series with two dead rubbers to follow. Australia has gained a lot of confidence since their tour to India just a couple of weeks back. Skipper Aaron Finch has two hundreds and a 90 under his belt in the first three ODIs against Pakistan.

The reason for Pakistan's series loss is that their players have performed individually but not together on a given day. They are not playing their top players who will be surely playing in the ICC World Cup 2019.

Former player and now Pakistan's bowling coach, Azhar Mahmood too thinks about the positives gained from this series rather than the result. He opines that they have ticked some boxes in batting and bowling units and have found new capable players too.

ICC quoted Mahmood saying, "There are a lot of positives for us, like Shinwari is back, he has bowled really well and (so has) Junaid. We have got a young find in the form of Hasnain. We are trying to give bench strength more opportunities to try and play international games."

He also talked about their batting and said, "(A) a lot of positives in the batting department as well, we got a couple of hundreds — Haris (Sohail) got a hundred, (Mohammad) Rizwan got a hundred. Unfortunately, today (Wednesday, 27 March, 3rd ODI), (the) ball was doing a bit so we were not good enough."

Mahmood also confirmed that the likes of Babar Azam, Fakhar Zaman, and the skipper for the World Cup, Sarfaraz Ahmed, were rested from the ODI series against Australia to prevent them from injuries.

He said, "We are trying different combinations keeping the World Cup in mind. If we play only our main strength and then someone gets injured, we won’t have any options left. This series was our best chance to test bench strength."

(Source: First Post)