Shahid Afridi talked about the short reign of Shaheen Afridi as Pakistan T20I captain and said that he would’ve respected Babar Azam more if he had agreed to play under the pacer’s leadership. However, Babar Azam regained the captaincy after Pakistan lost to New Zealand 1-4 under Shaheen.
Babar Azam had relinquished captaincy after 4 years after a poor ICC World Cup 2023 in India. He was replaced by Shan Masood as Test captain and Shaheen took over as T20I captain.
But after just one poor series, the PCB panicked and handed Babar the white-ball captaincy again, unceremoniously dumping Shaheen as skipper. At the time, former allrounder Afridi, Shaheen's father-in-law, expressed surprise at the choice, vowing to provide "full support" to Babar.
During Babar's second term, Pakistan drew the T20I series against New Zealand at home before losing to England before the T20 World Cup.
However, following Pakistan's setbacks to minnows USA and archrivals India in the present ICC T20 World Cup 2024, the 2009 T20 World Cup winner has expressed his disappointment with the decision to dismiss Shaheen as captain without giving him a longer run.
"Har insaan ki apni soch hai. Mai isko iss tarah leta hu ke meri nazar mei, duniya ki nazar mei, Babar Azam ki izzat aur zyad upar ho jaati agar woh ye stand leta apne player ke liye ki 'main Shaheen ki kaptaani mei khelna chahta hu...Shaheen ko agar bana diya kaptaan toh ye galat tareeqa hai ke aap usko fauran kaptaani se hata dein' (everyone has his own opinion. How I see it is that in my eyes and the eyes of the world, respect for Babar would have grown had he said at the time that he will play under Shaheen's captaincy and that it was wrong to remove Shaheen as captain so early)," said Afridi on a Pakistan news channel.
Afridi went on to add that if there is groupism in any team, it reflects poorly on the captain and indicates a lack of respect for the leader of the team. He also criticized Babar for never taking responsibility for a defeat and almost every time blaming it on the bowlers.
"Whenever there is grouping it means that the captain's respect in the dressing room among the players is going down. At every presentation, you (Babar) criticize the bowlers. You never take responsibility. I haven't heard, other than on an odd occasion, that you put responsibility (of a defeat) on the batsmen.
A captain has to take everybody forward with him...If a captain is of a strong character, then news like the formation of groups in the team will never come out," said Afridi.
Here is the video:
Pakistan defeated Canada on Tuesday, which was their first win of the tournament and kept their 'Super 8' qualification hopes alive.
