Former Indian cricket player Parthiv Patel criticized Pakistan’s captain, Babar Azam, for prioritizing his personal interests over the team’s. The Pakistan cricket team has faced a lot of criticism for their poor performance in the 2024 T20 World Cup. Babar’s team has been under constant criticism after failing in two straight ICC tournaments. Babar returned as captain before the T20 World Cup, but he couldn’t improve his team’s results.
In January 2024, during a series against New Zealand, Saim Ayub was given a chance to play at the top of the batting order. He played alongside Mohammad Rizwan, while Babar Azam moved to the number three position. But just before the T20 World Cup began, Babar returned to the opening position and played alongside Rizwan. Unfortunately, this opening pair did not have much success in the tournament.
Parthiv criticized Babar and pointed out that Fakhar Zaman had to move down in the batting order because Babar prioritised his own interests.
“The captain wanted to bat at the top, so Zaman had to move down. If the captain is only thinking about himself, there’s no hope,” Parthiv commented during a discussion, a part of which became popular on social media.
“This isn’t anything new. Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and others have said similar things,” Parthiv further mentioned.
Parthiv said that the Pakistan team doesn’t have enough good players for the T20 format and they are not as strong as other international teams.
“They don’t have the right kind of players for T20. Nowadays, we expect players to have a strike rate of 150-160, but these players are only around 120. They are much weaker than any other international team,” Parthiv explained.
Even though Babar took over as captain from Shaheen Shah Afridi, he couldn’t lead his team very far in the T20 World Cup 2024. This was the first time Pakistan was eliminated so early in the tournament. They didn’t even make it to the Super 8s stage because the USA team did better than them.
