Sikandar Bakht: “The whole nation was saying that he should have resigned. But he was stubborn. Because his style was like this, he was king”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Former Pakistan fast bowler Sikandar Bakht has slammed Babar Azam for being stubborn in delaying his decision to step down as limited overs captain.
Bakht noted that the 30-year-old thought “he was king”, but should have resigned from the captaincy right after the 2024 T20 World Cup in June.
Instead, Azam gave up the leadership role at the beginning of October.
Bakht questioned why the Lahore native took so long to step down and even went on to say “I don’t know what happened to him”.
“After three months, I think he should have done it at the same time. As soon as the World Cup was over, our World Cup was over on 16th June. Because we had not qualified further. He should have resigned at the same time. The whole nation was saying that he should have resigned. But he was stubborn,” he was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan.
“Because his style was like this, he was king (in a sarcastic way). His performance was not good, neither was theirs. Anyway, they should have seen that we are removed in two ways. I don’t know what happened to him.
“He was told to resign. Look, we have three captains in our base. There are groups of three captains. One is Babar, another is Rizwan. They want to become captains. Shaheen want to become captain again. And there is also Shan Masood. Shan Masood lost five or six matches.”
Azam recently played for Pakistan in their two-Test series against Bangladesh and made 64 runs at an average of 16.
He then represented then Stallions in the Champions One-Day Cup, which was a domestic 50-over competition that took place in Faisalabad.
In four games, he struck 230 runs, which included a century and a fifty, at an average of 76.66.
Following this, Azam featured in the first Test against England and made scores of 30 and 5.
He was subsequently removed from the squad for the second Test, which Pakistan won by 152 runs, and won’t take part in the third Test either, which begins 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.