Hesson: India the benchmark and Pakistan's challenge is to catch up to that

Pakistan had won against all teams in last year's Asia Cup but lost three times to India, including the final. That only underscored India's dominance over Pakistan, with the latter losing each of the last six matches between the two sides. Hesson said India are the "benchmark in white-ball cricket" but did not want Pakistan to get "too far ahead of overselves".

"India are the benchmark in terms of white-ball cricket at the moment and our challenge is to catch up to that," Hesson said on the sidelines of Pakistan's pre-departure camp in Karachi. "We are preparing as best as we can and if we get an opportunity to play [India], we will certainly put them under pressure as we were able to do in the final of the Asia Cup. There is a lot of cricket to be played between now and before being able to play the final for both sides, so we are not getting too far ahead of ourselves."

Pakistan, since, have continued their abysmal run in Test cricket and have been at the receiving end of series sweeps in Bangladesh and England. The off-field controversies have not helped either. Just before Hesson took the podium at the high-performance centre in Karachi for the media talk, it had emerged that his bowling coach Ashley Noffke will be joining Netherlands as head coach after the Asian Games.

"The Test team are struggling and we are all well aware of it," he said. "But the win percentage of the T20I team in the last 15 months has been third or the fourth best. We have lost to India on multiple occasions and that is the benchmark of all the Pakistani teams, we understand that. But to suggest that the T20 side is at a low [is not correct].

"We were eighth in the world in T20 cricket when I came in and now have gone up to fifth. We have gone up 30 points, which has happened only by winning series. We have won not only in Pakistan, but in Dubai and America etc. We have won a lot of series over the last 15 months in T20 cricket so I think it is not fair to put all three formats together.

"So, we are struggling in Test cricket and in one-day cricket we are developing heading into the World Cup and we have certainly improved our performance in the last 12 months, but we are by no means a finished product."

Pakistan have brought in experienced allrounder Mohammad Wasim Jnr for Salman Mirza, who is out of the Asian Games because of a fracture to his left thumb. Wasim last played a T20I for Pakistan in January against Sri Lanka in Dambulla.

Sahibzada Farhan will captain the 15-member squad which has four uncapped T20I players in Akif Javed, Ali Raza, Maaz Sadaqat, and Saad Masood. Pakistan open their campaign on September 28 with their quarter-final opponent yet to be confirmed. In the 2023 Asian Games, Pakistan had lost the bronze-medal match to Bangladesh.

Pakistan squad for Asian Games men's cricket

Sahibzada Farhan (capt), Abdul Samad (vice-capt), Abrar Ahmed, Ahmed Daniyal, Akif Javed, Ali Raza, Arafat Minhas, Haider Ali, Hasan Nawaz, Maaz Sadaqat, Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Saad Masood, Saim Ayub, Sufyan Moqim and Usman Khan (wicket-keeper)