MULTAN, Oct 25: Pakistan skipper Shoaib Malik on Thursday sounded confident about his team extending the lead against the South Africans by registering a series-deciding victory in the fourth One-day International in Multan on Friday.

Addressing a crowded press conference at the Multan Stadium on the eve of the match, Malik said: “Our morale is high and the team has bright chances of winning tomorrow’s match and with it the series.”

“The boys are making good efforts and on the basis of the performance they have given in the last two games, I am confident that we can win the series on Friday.”

When reminded that his tone dripped with over-confidence, Malik quickly checked himself to say that South Africans were the second best team in the world and could bounce back at any time. “We are well aware of their ability to bounce back anytime in this series,” he said.

South African coach Mickey Arthur, on the other hand, clearly said that the Friday game was a do-or-die one for his side and they were determined to go all out for a win. “We had already set our goals before coming to Pakistan and we want to go home with an ODI series win as well. Though we are in the deficit of one match, yet we shall try to win the match tomorrow at all cost. The match is like a final, a do or die clash for us,” said Arthur.

Praising the Pakistan team for coming back strongly in the five-match series, Arthur said: “Hats off to Pakistan who played better than us in the last two games and exploited the home conditions well. To their credit, Pakistan learned a lesson from the first match and realized that their strength lies in spin bowling. Afridi, Malik and Rehman have proved to be a handful for us,” he conceded. “But we shall come up with a new plan tomorrow to tame the hosts.”

Arthur said the nature of pitches in Pakistan was a debatable topic but room for improvement was always there.

He sounded a little worried over the bad patch of key batsman Jacques Kallis who after a brilliant performance in the two Test matches have struggled with scores of 8,0 and 13 in the last three ODIs.

“Kallis is a fantastic player and I am expecting he will do his job for the team in tomorrow’s game,” said Arthur.

He added that paceman Andre Nel, who had missed all the three ODIs, was likely to play on Friday.

The Proteas coach shrugged off any relevance between the security fears and the back-to-back losses of his side “There is no security related reason here. Pakistan played well and we made some mistakes which we will be looking to rectify tomorrow,” he said.

Shahid Afridi is likely to open the innings once again with Yasir Hameed but Pakistan will also be looking at Younis Khan to come good once again in the game.

Both teams will be wary of the dew factor in this crucial game which commences at mid-afternoon due to the Friday prayers and continues well into the night.

The team fielding first is likely to have a definite advantage in the drier conditions during the first half of the day while the side chasing the target is set to make the most of the wet conditions later with bowlers and fielders struggling to grip the ball owing to heavy dew.

Teams:

PAKISTAN.