The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) went through a tumultuous phase following the team’s terrible run in last year’s ODI World Cup in India. Babar Azam relinquished his captaincy across formats and once he was replaced by Shaheen Shah Afridi in T20Is, rumours of unrest between the two took social media by storm.
A few months down the line, the PCB also underwent an administrative changeover and the new stakeholders went back to Babar, reinstating him as Pakistan’s white-ball captain.
While reports suggested a clash of egos between the two star cricketers, they kept quashing all rumours. And now, Pakistan seek a second T20 World Cup title under Babar’s leadership.
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting believes Pakistan look a much more settled side with Babar at the helm. Speaking with the ICC, the Aussie legend opined that the 29-year-old batter is ready to turn heads at the showpiece event in the west.
“Captaincy just sits well with some people and it doesn’t sit well with others,” Ponting told The ICC Review.
“We’ve seen it through the years that some of the best players that have ever played the game have not necessarily made the best captains and the thing that makes some of the very best players so good is how focused they are on what they need to do to get better and to be the best and find a way every day to get better.
“And when you are captain, you can’t do that. You’ve got to actually compartmentalize what you’re doing, look after your own game, look after all the guys around you. So, some guys can manage that better than others.
“I reckon Babar, when he first started, I had that feeling that he… because if you look at his record, his numbers went down on the back of it. So I think he might have learned a bit from that.
“Shaheen didn’t set the world on fire as a leader either, so I think going back into a World Cup it just looks like a more settled team when you’ve got someone like Babar as captain rather than Afridi.”
Under the leadership of Babar Azam, Pakistan will begin their campaign against the hosts US on Thursday in Texas.
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