Zaheer Abbas: “Babar Azam should be dropped from the team. If he’s not scoring runs, because if he’s our main batsman and he’s out of form, he should be out of the team”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Legendary Pakistan batsman Zaheer Abbas believes it was the right decision to drop Babar Azam from the Test team as he is “out of form”.
Azam has struggled to score runs consistently in the longest format, with his last century coming against New Zealand in December 2022.
Interestingly, that was also the last time he surpassed the 50-run mark in Tests.
Considering the 30-year-old’s struggles have been going on for almost two years, Abbas conceded that “he should be out of the team”.
“Babar Azam should be dropped from the team. If he’s not scoring runs, because if he’s our main batsman and he’s out of form, he should be out of the team,” he was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan.
Azam featured in Pakistan’s two-Test series against Bangladesh, but was limited to 64 runs at an average of 16.
He then participated in the Champions One-Day Cup, which was a domestic 50-over competition that took place in Faisalabad.
In four games for the Stallions, he amassed 230 runs, which included a century and a fifty, at an average of 76.66.
Following this, Azam played 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 wasn’t part of the playing XI for the third Test either, which began 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.