Danish Kaneria: “A captain is someone who takes the pressure on his shoulders and carries the team forward with his performance, which both Babar and Shan Masood have failed to do”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Former Pakistan spinner Danish Kaneria said Babar Azam and Shan Masood have failed to carry the team forward with their performances as captain.
Azam has had two stints as captain, with his most recent one coming to an end at the beginning of October.
As for Masood, he currently leads the Pakistan Test team, but hasn’t been in the best of form with the bat.
Kaneria pointed out that it is the captain’s job to lead from the front, but feels both Azam and Masood have fallen well short of the mark of doing that.
Additionally, he questioned why Azam was made captain in the first place when Sarfaraz Ahmed was doing so well.
“I don’t know why Babar Azam was given the leadership responsibility despite Sarfaraz Ahmed’s good captaincy. Currently, there is no captain material in the Pakistan team. A captain is someone who takes the pressure on his shoulders and carries the team forward with his performance, which both Babar and Shan Masood have failed to do,” Kaneria told IANS as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.
Azam and Masood both featured in Pakistan’s two-Test series against Bangladesh, with the former scoring 64 runs at an average of 16.
As for Masood, he finished with 105 runs in two games, which included a top score of 57, at an average of 26.25.
Both players then represented the Stallions in the Champions One-Day Cup, which was a domestic 50-over competition held in Faisalabad.
Azam finished with 230 runs in four games, which included a century and a fifty, at an average of 76.66, while Masood accumulated 102 runs in four matches at an average of 25.50.
The Pakistan team are now taking on England in a three-match Test series, but Azam only featured in the first Test, where he made scores of 30 and 5.
The 29-year-old was subsequently rested for the second Test, which Pakistan won by 152 runs, and won’t feature in the third Test either.
Masood, meanwhile, has amassed 176 runs in two Tests, which includes a top score of 151, at an average of 44.
The series is tied at 1-1 going into the third Test, which gets underway on October 24 in Rawalpindi.
Pakistan Squad for 2nd and 3rd Tests against England: Shan Masood (captain), Saud Shakeel (vice-captain), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Haseebullah Khan (wicketkeeper), Kamran Ghulam, Mehran Mumtaz, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Ali, Muhammad Hurraira, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Sajid Khan, Salman Ali Agha, Zahid Mahmood.
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