The 25-year-old Pakistan T20I captain Babar Azam has been appointed as the ODI captain of the Pakistan national cricket team. Meanwhile, Azhar Ali will continue the Test captaincy.
On Wednesday (13th May), the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has confirmed the captaincies of the national team. While Babar Azam and Azhar Ali was already holding the captaincy of T20I and Test formats respectively, the PCB has now announced the ODI captain too.
Pakistan played their last ODI on 2nd October 2019 against Sri Lanka at Karachi where Sarfaraz Ahmed led the Pakistan team. Though Pakistan had a schedule to play an ODI against Bangladesh at Karachi on 1st April 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has forced to postpone that game.
However, in this off period, while the PCB has announced the men’s central contract list for the 2020/21 season, the board has also announced the ODI captain. Babar will now lead both the limited-overs Pakistan teams.
National team chief selector and Head Coach Misbah-ul-Haq said in the PCB statement, “I want to congratulate Azhar Ali and Babar Azam for getting captaincy extensions. This is absolutely the right decision as they also require certainty and clarity on their future roles. I am sure they will now start looking to the future and start planning so that they can build sides that can perform at the expected levels.”
Babar Azam is one of the most in-form cricketers at present
At present, Babar is the top-ranked T20I batsman, third-ranked ODI batsman and fifth-ranked Test batsman. After making his international debut in 2015, Babar has played 26 Tests, 74 ODIs and 38 T20Is where the right-handed batsman has scored 1850 runs (average 45.12), 3359 runs (average 54.17) and 1471 runs (average 50.72) respectively.
Babar started his T20I captaincy during the Australia tour last November and has led the Pakistan team in five T20Is where his team won twice, lost twice and the other one had no result.
On the other hand, Azhar Ali first time led the Pakistan Test side in November 2016 during the Hamilton Test against New Zealand. After he was appointed the Test captaincy role last year, Ali has led the Pakistan Test team in five more matches. Under his captaincy, Pakistan Test team won twice, lost thrice and the other one had the draw result.