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LAHORE: Pakistan Cricket captain, Shoaib Malik says captaincy is not a pressure on him but an extra responsibility which he always takes with pride.

“I never feel myself under pressure while leading the side but of course it is an extra responsibility because you are responsible for team’s performance whatsoever,” he told APP here on Monday.

He said taking pressure of captaincy can jeopardise his plans to lift team’s performance and can also ruin his personal performance. “I have been leading the team since last year and I always try to do justice in the role of a leader and I am not afraid of taking responsibility rather I try to do it with pride,” he said.

“I always enjoy playing cricket and I try to play positive cricket and my aim in every match is to be there to put up good performance as an all-rounder and a fielder,” he added. Shoaib said after series victory by taking unassailable 3-0 lead against Bangladesh he would like to see the team maintaining consistency to thwart Bangladesh team’s possible comeback.

He said the team demonstrated brilliance by winning three back to back matches and now they are focused on making it 5-0. “Mission is not yet accomplished, two matches are there and Bangladesh is improving continuously and in the third ODI they proved it through resolute batting effort and some good bowling and we have to stop them from bouncing back,” he said.

Malik said barring three or four players rest are young and termed the team new look. “We are noticing our mistakes and it is a worry to see that bowlers are conceding too many extra runs and any good team cannot afford to give away so many runs to the opponents.”

Shoaib Malik urged the bowlers to be more disciplined in line and length and asked the batsmen to follow the technique and scoring abilities of century makers Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal which they exhibited in the third ODI.

“Salman is returning to form and Kamran was too good in the role of a make shift opener and it was a deadly opening combination which helped the team in having a solid innings base,” he said.

End.