Misbah-ul-Haq was Pakistan’s last hope in the 2007 T20 World Cup final against India, where they were chasing 158 runs. In the final over, he tried a scoop shot against Joginder Sharma, but mistimed the ball and delivered an easy catch to S Sreesanth, which resulted in India’s victory.
Misbah, in a recent conversation on Shoaib Akhtar’s Youtube Channel, has revealed that the scoop shot had brought a lot of success to him throughout the World Cup. Even against spinners, that shot helped him to hit boundaries. This instilled in him a lot of confidence to attempt the scoop again on a big stage like the T20 World Cup final.
“In 2007, I always say that throughout every game in the World Cup, I scored so many fours playing that shot. Even with the fine leg in place, I was taking singles while playing that shot against Australia. Against spinners, I used to beat fine leg with that shot”, Misbah said.
Misbah-ul-Haq admitted that he may have overestimated his ability to play that risky shot.
“You can say I got overconfident,” Misbah said.
Misbah-ul-Haq speaks in detail about the 2011 World Cup semi-final
Misbah scored 56 runs in the semi-final of the 2011 ODI World Cup against India. However, he was not able to win the match for his team. Misbah stressed on the fact that the regular fall of wickets damaged their chances.
He said that he was confident of even scoring 100 in the final 10 overs if he had received support from other batters.
“Throughout the World Cup, we were scoring heavily in the batting powerplay towards the end. The thought was that even if we needed 100 runs in the final 10 overs, we had a batting powerplay of five overs. If we had wickets in hand, we could’ve easily chased it down.”, Misbah said.