With only a few days left before the Pakistan Under 19 squad departs for New Zealand to play 3 one dayers against the Kiwis and then take part in the World Cup, PakPassion caught up with the former Under 19 World Champion, Jamshed Ahmed.

by Saj Sadiq

27th December 2009

With only a few days left before the Pakistan Under 19 squad departs for New Zealand to play 3 one dayers against the Kiwis and then take part in the World Cup, PakPassion caught up with the former Under 19 World Champion, Jamshed Ahmed.

Jamshed of course has fond memories of the 2006 tournament in Sri Lanka where Pakistan devastated their highly rated Indian counterparts in the final at the Premadasa Stadium Colombo.

Whilst the tournament that Jamshed took part in was over 3 years ago, it was clearly evident to me by the way that Jamshed reeled off the scores in the tournament, that those memories are cherished and not too far from his mind.

"It was a special time for me and the other boys in the squad. Pakistan were the reigning champions and we wanted to do our best to retain the title" stated Jamshed.

The left armer who is currently playing first class cricket for PIA continued "Our coach Mansoor Rana was brilliant throughout the tournament. He never let our heads go down and even in the final when we only mustered 109 runs he said we could bowl the Indians out for less than 100 and lift the title. During the innings break he gathered all of us and said that the Indian batting lineup was relatively untried during the tournament, as they had won many of their matches with relative ease and if we could pick up some ealy wickets we coud run through their batting order".

Jamshed who picked up 14 wickets in the tournament at less than 12 runs apiece added "There was a real bond in that squad and we had such a positive mindset and attitude, we felt as if we could beat anyone. We would listen to readings of the Quran before a match and our plan was to impose ourselves on the opposition".

Jamshed feels that the current crop of Under 19 boys have different strengths to the 2006 squad that he was part of. "Our victories were based on our seam attack. I would say that we won the World Cup largely down to our seam bowlers. With the current squad, the batting is strong with Babar Azam, Ahmed Shehzad and Azeem Ghumman and the bulk of the runs will be expected to come from them. My colleague at PIA who is the wicketkeeper batsman Anop Ravi is also a very talented cricketer. The spin options of Raza Hasan and Usman Qadir are also very talented cricketers and wicket taking bowlers and I would expect them to perform well in New Zealand".

Jamshed who is looking to play league cricket in the UK next season continued "Its so important for the youngsters to listen to the advice being given to them by coach Ijaz Ahmed and to support one another and most importantly to go into the tournament with a positive mindset".

Pakistan Under 19s are in Group D alongside Bangladesh, West Indies and Papua New Guinea. Their first warmup match is against Zimbabwe on 11th January and their World Cup campaign commences against the West Indies on January 15th.