Irfan Pathan has been bowling excellently the past two ODI's versus Pakistan, especially at the start of the innings when the ball was swinging. He is using his old weapon of swinging bowl in the right-hander very cleverly, the way he dismissed some of the Pakisatni batsmen was pure class!

Because he is getting alot of help from the condition at the start of the innings when the white ball is still shiny he should ball the maximum amount of overs he possibly can, maybe about 8 overs at the start. At the moment he bowls around 5/6 overs and is replaced, which is wrong in my IMO because when he comes back to bowl at the end of the innings he is pretty much in-effective and gets smacked around the park.

Also about his batting, I think we shouldn't be putting to much burden on him. Today we saw Pathan coming at no.3 and he failed which is not suprising as he was probably very tired after bowling 10 overs in Pakistani innings. I think we should only use Pathan at no.3 when we are batting first and if we are batting second he should bat below the top 5 batsmen.

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CC