Captaincy Circus Continues In Pakistan Cricket As Babar Is Reappointed As White Ball Captain

 


Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) continues to entertain the fans as they have reappointed Babar Azam as their white ball captain, just three months after he stepped down from that role.

Babar was offered T20I captaincy just before the Australia tour back in late 2019 which he accepted and then in 2020 he was made Pakistan's all format captain. His four-year captaincy tenure had a few ups and more downs. The positives included, beating India for the first time in a World Cup back in 2021, reaching the semi-final of 2021 T20I World Cup, the final of Asia Cup 2022 and T20I World Cup 2022. Negatives were that we reached the knockout stages multiple times under Babar's leadership, but never got over the line. Babar was unable to win any championship in his captaincy reign. Few more negatives were that Pakistan's test side lost two back to back home series in 2022 against Australia and England, in short we lost four test matches in a row under his leadership. 

After the ODI World Cup 2023 with team's disappointing performance in the tournament, Babar Azam stepped down as Pakistan's captain from all three formats. It was rumoured that behind the doors he was told to step down by the PCB officials. Nonetheless, his long four-year tenure was over, and it was time for new faces to lead the Pakistan cricket team. PCB went on and appointed Shaheen Shah Afridi as Pakistan's T20I captain, while Shan Masood was given the captaincy of the Test side.

Shaheen captained Pakistan's T20I side against New Zealand earlier this year for five matches, which Pakistan ended up losing 4-1. He then had a tough Pakistan Super League season as well as his team Lahore Qalandars ended up being at the bottom of the table. 

Now right before when Pakistan is ready to host New Zealand for five match T20I series in April, and we are just couple months away from the T20I World Cup 2024, PCB decided to remove Shaheen from leadership and reappointed Babar as the captain. This decision created new debate on social media as many believe that this is really unfair on Shaheen as he just got to captain the team for one series whereas Babar was given four complete years in his tenure. Others also feel that Babar should've never accepted the captaincy offer as he should've stood by Shaheen.

Babar will now again lead Pakistan in both ODI and T20I formats, although the main focus right now is T20I, with the World Cup being right around the corner. This will be Babar's third T20I World Cup as skipper, which is quite incredible.

This appointment has raised a few questions amongst the fans. A few of them are, will Babar learn from his previous captaincy mistakes and become a better leader this time around, will his batting be effected again because of the captaincy pressure, and how will Babar adjust with Muhammad Amir and Imad Wasim who criticized him on national television when he was leading the side previously? 

Things don't look simple for Babar Azam moving forward, but he can do one thing to prove the critics wrong, and that is to win the upcoming T20I World Cup.


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