KEY POINTS:
Pakistan skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq is adamant that he will not follow other greats into retirement after the World Cup.
Australia's Glenn McGrath will quit all forms of cricket after the event and West Indies captain Brian Lara is expected to retire from one-dayers and play only tests.
With Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya and India's Anil Kumble possibly also heading into one-day retirement, there were rumours that Inzamam could follow suit, but yesterday he quashed such suggestions.
"Definitely I will continue to play as long as I feel I can give the performances and as long as there are no deadlines given [from the board] for any player to end his career," Inzamam said.
"If I can keep performing well, doing a good job for my country, that will be good enough for me to keep on playing."
Inzamam, who was 37 this month, has played 375 one-day internationals and only Sachin Tendulkar (381) and Jayasuriya (379) have played more matches than him.
He is also the second-highest run scorer in ODI history with 11,665, trailing only India's Tendulkar (14,783).
Inzamam scored just 19 runs in six innings at the last World Cup in South Africa and he is expected to improve on that record without much trouble as he heads towards 12,000 runs.
With Pakistan to meet host West Indies in the opening match tomorrow, Inzamam was relaxed about his team's prospects despite the loss of key bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif.
"There have been problems in the past as far as some injuries are concerned but, regarding preparations, everything is in order and the team is looking forward to this World Cup," Inzamam said.
"Pakistan has played before without these two bowlers and Asif has only been around the team for about a year.
"It is a loss for the Pakistan team but we have enough good bowlers to continue without them."
Although Pakistan won both their warm-up matches this week whereas West Indies were skittled out for 85 runs in a nine-wicket defeat by India on Friday, Inzamam was not about to read too much into that result.
"That can happen at any time and it doesn't mean we will underestimate the West Indies side," Inzamam said. "We will just play the game as it comes."
And the Pakistanis have been banned from speaking in English at cup news conferences to prevent players from being misquoted, according to a team spokesman.
Former player Pervez Mir, the team's press liaison officer during the World Cup, said that Pakistan's players would speak only in Urdu, which would also help to promote tourism to Pakistan.
"This decision was taken by the Pakistan Cricket Board because it is our national language and because 2007 is our National Tourist Year so we are promoting Pakistan as well.
"This is the perfect platform to promote and expose our national language, so there's nothing more to it."
He added that a Pakistan player had been misquoted in Trinidad after the gas leak that led to the team being evacuated from their hotel earlier in the week.
"A journalist spoke to Danish Kaneria and asked him what he thought about the gas leak and he tried to play the incident down and said, 'It happens'.
"But when the report came out the journalist quoted him saying, 'It happens at home as well'.
"So we would rather avoid these kinds of incidents and speak in Urdu at official times, as well as for reasons of promoting Pakistan."
* South Africa have been unable to shake off their World Cup "chokers" tag but they no longer deserve it, captain Graeme Smith said yesterday.
"The chokers tag is something we have always struggled to get rid of, which was given to us by an individual," he said, referring to former Australian skipper Steve Waugh.
"It is something this team has found quite amusing at times.
"A lot of those things are speculation and it [winning] comes down to the day. The team has performed well under pressure, won from tight situations from where no one gave us any hope.
"I'd say in our [team] environment that word is quite a laughable word, except when you are eating spare ribs or something like that."
Waugh dubbed South Africa "chokers" after a dropped catch by Herschelle Gibbs allowed him to hit a match-winning century in the Super Sixes stage of the 1999 World Cup.
- AGENCIES
