2:37 AM
McGhori
DUBAI: Rival captains Misbah-ul-Haq and Andrew Strauss showed surprise at England`s capitulation which saw them lose the first Test against Pakistan by ten wickets here on Thursday.
And the manner of victory surprised Misbah.
`Obviously, we were not expecting it would finish so early, but I guess all the credit goes to the bowlers. No team would have expected such a victory against the world number one,` said the Pakistan captain.
The win also gave Misbah seven wins in 13 Tests as captain since taking over in October 2010.
`We are trying to be one of the best teams in the world, but I think it`s still a long way to go, we have to just improve much more than this, and we are just on the right path,` added the 37-year-old Pakistani captain.
Misbah praised his bowlers. `It`s a wonderful performance by our bowlers, they stuck to their task and it was total variations of Saeed on which they made mistakes. It`s a very big win for us which will increase our self-confidence,` remarked Misbah.
The Pakistan captain, however, expects England to bounce straight back.
`When you are number one team there is something that makes you number one, they have good quality cricketers, they are fighters and they can really come hard on us,` he added.
England captain Strauss said Pakistan surprised them after they won the toss and batted on day one.
`We were caught off guard in the first session of the first day on a very flat wicket, from then on Pakistan were in front and never let us back into the game and you need to congratulate them for the way they played,` said Strauss.
Strauss, under whom this is England`s first defeat in ten Tests, pointed a finger at batsmen.
`Obviously we are disappointed by the way we batted in the both innings, primarily in the first innings because it was not a 50 for five wickets. So you need to learn some lessons from that and move forward.
`The most important thing is not to be too carried away by the result and obviously learn the lessons from that and make sure you don`t make those mistakes again,` said Strauss, who added that he was not worried about the number one ranking.
`This is not the time for us to be worrying about number one or anything like that. What we need to do is make sure we don`t play this type of cricket we played in this game in the next Test and that is what our focus is on.
`The feeling of disappointment is a good motivation to make sure that it does not happen again,` said Strauss.
Strauss, whose team played the first Test since beating India in August last year, refused to agree England were under-prepared.-AFP
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