Pakistan’s former captain Babar Azam resigned as the captain of the Pakistan cricket team from all three formats (ODI Test & T20) on November 15.
His resignation followed heavy criticism from fans and former cricketers after Pakistan’s poor performance in the ODI World Cup 2023. The team was not successful in reaching the semi-finals, ending their World Cup journey at the fifth spot.
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced Shan Masood as the Test Captain while left-arm pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi became the T20 captain.
The decision to make Shaheen captain of the T20s has been accepted more easily by the general public after he proved himself a competitive captain in the last two seasons of the Pakistan Super League (PSL). His team, Lahore Qalanders, had the unenviable record of being eliminated every time in the group stage in earlier seasons. However, under Afridi, they won two trophies.
Now the question arises as to why Shan Masood was picked captain in the Test format.
Fans believe there were better options in the team like wicketkeeper-batsman Muhammad Rizwan and Sarfraz Ahmed, who led Pakistan to the Champions Trophy under the captaincy in 2017. The team won 11 consecutive T20 series under his captaincy.
Muhammad Rizwan is also a consistent player in all formats, with a better average and strike rate than Shan’s in all three formats.
Here is the all-time performance of Rizwan, Sarfraz, and Shan in test format (International).
Here is all time performance of these three players in all formats (International).
Shan Masood
Muhammad Rizwan
Sarfraz Ahmed
If the PCB must choose a captain on the player’s performance, then Rizwan must be the captain instead of Shan. But if they are picking a captain because he can speak good English or whatever, then our cricket will never improve, analysts and fans gave said.
In the past, every time Pakistan lost in any tournament, captains, coaches, and selectors were changed without a positive outcome.
Pakistan is set to play a three-match test series against Australia starting from December 14.
The new chief selector Wahab Riaz picked Imam-ul-Haq in the batting lineup despite the batter totally failing during the Asia Cup and World Cup 2023 campaign, while he didn’t select Sahib Zada Farhan by saying that “no place is left in the team”, effectively sidelining a very good right-handed batsman.
They also didn’t pick Muhammad Abbas who took 90 wickets in 25 test matches.
The need of the hour is the selection of captain, coach, or selector, should be on merit, otherwise, we cannot change our system.
