Pakistan opener Fakhar Zaman has finally broken his silence on tweeting in support of Babar Azam in October, explaining why he did so.

 

He appeared on PAKTV.TV on YouTube on Monday with sports Journalist Sanaullah, where he openly talked about tweeting in favour of Babar Azam and gave his reasons for doing so. The host asked him, "If you had tweeted, did it occur to you that there could have been a better way and that you should not have tweeted?" 

 

"I completely thought that it would have been better if I had not tweeted," Fakhar replied. "People also thought that I had criticized the Board's (Pakistan Cricket Board) decision, but this was 100 per cent wrong. I had tweeted before the team was announced. Some of our journalists and former cricketers were saying that Babar should be dropped. It was coming to my mind that people do not see that Babar Azam has done so much for the country and are saying that he should be dropped."

 

Fakhar said that he tweeted before the team was announced. "Think for yourself, I am also a cricketer, in a way, an employee of the PCB. I will tell all the players that you can never be above the Board, nor can you criticize any decision of the Board as long as you are playing. I did not tweet because Babar would sympathize with me, I always talk to him on and off," he added.

 

He also said, "The young batter Khawaja Naffay is a good boy; he has a spark. You must have seen that Saim Ayub came in the beginning, and he also struggled a lot. The first thing I said about him was that if he takes care of himself, he can become an updated version of Babar Azam. Similarly, this boy Naffay also has a lot of spark, if he is groomed for big cricket, he can play for Pakistan for a long time."

 

Fakhar had expressed his support for Babar Azam on X (formerly Twitter) on October 13, 2024, following Babar's exclusion from Pakistan's Test squad for the remaining matches against England. In his post, Fakhar highlighted that during Virat Kohli's challenging period between 2020 and 2023, India did not drop him, suggesting that sidelining Babar could negatively impact the team.