Pakistan's problems self-inflicted - Imran Khan

Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan believes that Pakistan's problems at the World Twenty20 are 'self-inflicted'. In his column in Hindustan Times, Imran questioned the team selection and the batting order employed by Pakistan in their defeat against England.

Left-arm seamer Sohail Tanvir, the star of last year's IPL, was left out of the team against England, a move which, Imran says, left him puzzled. "I was surprised that they (Pakistan) decided to go without Sohail Tanvir on the grounds of him being off-colour in the warm-up games. Tanvir is a proven performer, and the purpose of warm-up games is to make off-colour bowlers get back into rhythm. He would have been hard to put away in overcast conditions, with his nippy pace and unusual action," he wrote.

Imran also criticized the decision to send Misbah-Ul-Haq in at No. 7 when the right-hander did not have enough overs left to force a win. "I do not subscribe to the theory of holding back your best batsmen since it is always easier to avert a batting crisis rather than to bat in a crisis," he wrote.

He said Shahid Afridi had been "very poor with the bat of late", rating him more effective as a bowler.

Imran expected Pakistan to win against Netherlands by a convincing margin to progress to the next stage, but said Younis Khan should "ensure that his best strikers get the maximum balls to face" if they made it to the Super-Eights.