India, Pak should be more aggressive: Latif

Both Pakistan and India should take a leaf out of Australia's book and learn to come out with a more aggressive brand of cricket in big tournaments like the Champions Trophy, feels former skipper Rashid Latif. Pakistan went down to New Zealand by five wickets in the semifinal yesterday, while Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men failed to enter the final-four stage of the eight-nation tournament in South Africa. "Both Pakistan and India need to change their approach and mentality towards cricket. We need to play more aggressive and entertaining cricket," Latif, who has played 37 Tests for Pakistan, told PTI. "We shouldn't worry about results, but we should worry about playing positively all the time and the good results will come automatically. Australia is a classic example of this," he added. However, Latif also believes that both Dhoni and Younus Khan are capable of leading their respective sides to much better results in the 2011 World Cup, which would be co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. "I see Dhoni and Younus as captains in the next World Cup and also hope both of them have definitely the capacity to take their teams to the top of the rankings," Latif said. "But I think, we will see changes in coaching staff in both teams before the next World Cup because the way I look at things there are many people who would not be satisfied with their performance," Latif said. "If you look at Pakistan, it has improved gradually under Younus. We won the Twenty20 World Cup in England and reached the Champions Trophy semifinal - those are not bad results," he added. Latif also pointed to the amount of pressure cricketers of the sub-continent have to handle all the time due to huge popularity of the game in the region. "The dilemma is while in other countries there is one captain and coach, the sub-continent cricket is such a big thing that you have millions of captains and coaches with their own take on every cricket issue and that adds to the pressure," Latif said. "But you can't always win and our people don't accept and get emotional. You need to back you captains all the time. That is how positive results are achieved over a period of time," he added. Meanwhile, another former Pakistan captain Rameez Raja held Younus Khan's finger injury responsible for his timid form in the Champions Trophy. "Obviously he struggled with his fitness and that is why he was not in the best of batting form. And when the captain is not scoring runs it does directly affect his captaincy on the field," Raja said.