Ramiz Raja: “If you are Babar Azam, then you become a headline – How did we lose? What did he do? What was his contribution?”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ramiz Raja said all the fans in the country constantly have one problem – they are obsessed with the form of limited overs captain Babar Azam.
Azam has been Pakistan’s go-to run-scorer in all three formats for the past few years and has repeatedly won games for the men in green on his own.
However, the 29-year-old has experienced a dip over the past couple of months, which has propelled him into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
Ramiz noted that social media is ablaze with people criticising Azam when he fails to score runs, which is something he feels is wrong as players in the national team need to be supported and encouraged when they are going through tough times.
“It seems the entire nation does not have a problem with anything except the form of Babar Azam. Unfortunately what happens is when you lose a match and you have not scored runs and if you are Babar Azam, then you become a headline – How did we lose? What did he do? What was his contribution? And then this is the era of social media. Anybody can criticise and ridicule anyone, this should be discouraged as much as possible,” he said on his YouTube channel as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.
Azam was recently in action in Pakistan’s two-Test series against Bangladesh and mustered 64 runs at an average of 16.
Pakistan were subpar throughout the series and thus lost 2-0.
Pakistan Squad for Bangladesh Test Series: Shan Masood (captain), Saud Shakeel (vice-captain), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Kamran Ghulam, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Ali, Muhammad Hurraira, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Naseem Shah, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wicketkeeper), Shaheen Shah Afridi