Shoaib Akhtar: “Sometimes it happens that you can’t score runs but I’m sure Babar is trying his best. We expect a lot from him so we should try to stay positive”
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Legendary Pakistan pace bowler Shoaib Akhtar said captain Babar Azam is trying his best after he failed to impress in the recent Test series against Zimbabwe.
Azam only mustered two runs in the two Tests at an average of one, but Pakistan still secured a 2-0 series win.
Akhtar urged people to stay positive and said sometimes players – even world-class ones like Azam – just can’t score runs.
“Sometimes it happens that you can’t score runs but I’m sure Babar is trying his best. We expect a lot from him so we should try to stay positive,” he said while speaking on PTV Sports as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.
Prior to the Test series against Zimbabwe, Azam made scores of 103, 31 and 94 in the ODI series against South Africa, giving him a total of 228 runs at an average of 76.
As for the T20 series, he made 14 and 50 in the first two matches before hammering a career-best 122, which came off 59 balls and included 15 boundaries and four sixes, in the third T20 International.
In the fourth game, he was dismissed for 24 and thus finished with 210 runs in four matches at an average of 52.50 and a strike-rate of 143.83.
He amassed 95 runs in the three-match T20 series against Zimbabwe, which included a top score of 52, at an average of 31.66 and a strike-rate of 100.
During that series, he became the fastest batsman to score 2,000 runs in T20 Internationals.