Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram has said Babar Azam made a mistake by taking on the Test captaincy again, arguing the batter should have stayed on purely as a player during the team’s troubled tour of England.
Akram shared his views alongside former pacer Waqar Younis at a charity fundraising event in Manchester.
“I do not want to blame anyone, and I could be wrong as well,” Akram said. “But in my opinion, Babar should not have taken the captaincy. All of this was unnecessary.”
Akram’s comments followed Pakistan’s turbulent Test series in England, where the team went through a major shake-up after losing the first two matches. During the toss ahead of the third Test in Birmingham, reporters asked Babar about the decision to send seven players home and overhaul the coaching staff. He replied that he had no knowledge of the changes.
Akram mocked that response directly. “Babar Azam said he did not know. If you don’t know, then what were you doing here? Were you there to sell chickpeas?”
He went on to explain why a captain being left out of major decisions damages the whole squad. “As a player or as a person, I believe that if your leader or captain does not stand by you, you cannot give 100 percent,” he added.
Akram suggested Babar should have given up the captaincy after Pakistan’s second-Test defeat and finished the series simply as a player. “My suggestion is that after the second Test, Babar should have said that he would play only as a player,” he said.
Pakistan’s board handed Babar the Test captaincy on July 5, replacing Shan Masood, ahead of the tours of the West Indies and England. He had already led the side in Tests once before, between 2020 and 2023, winning 10 of 20 matches, losing six and drawing four.
This second stint started with a 1-1 draw in the West Indies. England then handed Pakistan a 3-0 whitewash.
England won the opener at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs, then took the second Test at Lord’s by 194 runs. After that defeat, the Pakistan Cricket Board sent seven players home and reshaped the coaching set-up, but the changes did not prevent a third straight loss, with England completing the sweep by eight wickets at Edgbaston.
Babar struggled with the bat through the series, managing just 97 runs across four innings, including three single-digit scores before an unbeaten 76 in the final innings at Edgbaston that came in a losing cause.
