The last few years with the bat and as the captain of the Pakistan team across formats haven’t been healthy for Babar Azam, who has been going through a very tough time in the last 15 months. Under his leadership, the Green Brigade had a very tough time last year in the ODI World Cup in India.
It followed it up with another poor performance in the 2024 T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the United States of America (USA), where they lost their opening game against the co-host before repeating the same return in the second game against Rohit Sharma’s men side, despite being in a winning position.
With the bat, Babar Azam struggled in the shortest format of the game as his strike rate dropped down a terrible position. Under him, the Pakistan side won the Test series in Sri Lanka before the board decided to remove him from the position and appointed Shan Masood for the Australia tour.
Zaheer Abbas wants Babar Azam to leave captaincy
In the recent home series of the red-ball format, Babar Azam was expected to be back in good form against Bangladesh. But things didn’t go in his favor at all. He struggled to get going in both the Test matches in Rawalpindi.
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The former Pakistan batter, who is known as the ‘Asia Bradman’ for their legendary qualities in the batting department, has publicly called for the removal of the veteran batter from the squad due to his prolonged dip in form.
He was present at the Cricket Predicta Conclave in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, during the celebration of the international cricket talk show’s hundredth episode.
“Babar Azam should be dropped from the team. If he’s not scoring runs, because if he’s our main batsman and he’s out of form, he should be out of the team.” The right-handed batter expressed.
The veteran also believes it shouldn’t rely on being called as the main batter of the side. If the Lahore-born isn’t in form, he should be dropped from the side in the future. The remarks have come on the back of his low scores in the Bangladesh series, where he returned with 0, 22, 11, and 21, leading to a historic 2-0 defeat.
Recent reports have also claimed that the role of the white-ball captaincy of Babar Azam is under review at present, and speculations have grown over his position ahead of their future trip to Australia in November.
Abbas also has weighed on the ongoing compassion between Virat Kohli and the 29-year-old and dismissed it as ‘baseless’ given their current form.
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“The comparisons are pointless; Virat Kohli scores in every match, the other player (Babar) doesn’t score in any match, so then how can you compare? The person who scores is the bigger player.” The Punjab-born highlighted.
At the moment, Babar Azam has scored 3962 runs in 54 games of the longest format of the game at an average of under 45 with the help of nine centuries and 26 half-centuries. In the white-ball format, he has nailed 5729 runs in 117 ODIs at an average of 56.72.
Azam will get another opportunity to return in good form during the upcoming three-match Test series in Pakistan, which starts on October 7 at the Multan Cricket Stadium. All of these Test matches will be part of the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 cycle.