Babar Azam, the captain of Pakistan, has long faced criticism for his captaincy. His issues are made worse by the recent focus that has been placed on his batting. Babar Azam, once regarded as one of the best hitters in the world, is unquestionably not performing at his peak right now. Former Pakistan spinner Danish Kaneria has recently joined the list of detractors who continue to call him out for his subpar batting across all formats.
“Babar Azam team ka run-rate kharaab kar jata hai (Babar Azam deteriorates the scoring rate of the team),” said Kaneria on his YouTube channel. “If you see this Indian team, they are full of match winners. But on the Pakistan side, we heavily depend on Babar Azam in all three formats, and he only scores for himself. Babar Azam continues to score his own 50, 60, 70 runs and the team doesn’t benefit from that at all, and it’s just causing losses,” said the former Pakistan spinner in Hindi.
Pakistan hosted the Three Lions and New Zealand over the course of three series after losing the T20 World Cup final to England the previous year, but failed to win any of them. The Babar Azam-led team lost to England 3-0 in a clean sweep before playing New Zealand in a two-match series and drawing 0-0. They were all Test games. After that, Pakistan played a three-match ODI series against New Zealand, which the hosts eventually lost 1-2 despite gaining an early lead.
According to Kaneria, Pakistan could take a cue from teams like India on how to make the most of playing at home. “Did we make any big score of note in the ODIs? Did anyone score double hundred? Was there any dominant performance? No. We need to learn from other countries like India who are exploiting their conditions. But here we are afraid of losing in our own conditions,” Kaneria said.