Junaid Khan: “As a player, Babar Azam is the world’s number one, but giving him the captaincy in all three formats on a plate was wrong”
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Pakistan left-arm seamer Junaid Khan believes appointing Babar Azam as captain in all three formats was a big mistake.
Azam recently resigned from the leadership role, with Shan Masood taking over as Test captain and Shaheen Shah Afridi succeeding him as T20I skipper.
While the 29-year-old did regularly lead from the front with the bat during his tenure as captain, Pakistan failed to impress in a lot of major tournaments, such as the Asia Cup and the recent 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup.
During the World Cup, Azam amassed 320 runs in nine matches, which included four fifties, at an average of 40.
Despite Junaid calling him the top player in the world, he reiterated that the Lahore-born batsman shouldn’t have led Pakistan in all forms of the game.
“As a player, Babar Azam is the world’s number one, but giving him the captaincy in all three formats on a plate was wrong,” he was quoted as saying by respected journalist Saj Sadiq on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Pakistan won their first two World Cup matches against the Netherlands and Sri Lanka before falling to India, Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa.
Even though they fought back to take down Bangladesh and New Zealand, they failed to advance to the semi-finals.
The men in green concluded their campaign in dismal fashion as England thumped them by 93 runs.
Azam will now represent Pakistan in their three-match Test series against Australia, which gets underway on December 14 in Perth.
Pakistan Squad for Australia Test Series: Shan Masood (captain), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi
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