Is Azhar Ali fit to lead the limited overs squad of Pakistan? Not at all. Does he warrant a place in the final XI of the ODI team? Not in his current form. Is he blocking the place of a more deserving player in the side? Yes and everyone including Azhar Ali knows that but even then, they don’t do anything about it.
That’s the reason Pakistan’s ODI team is at number 9 because the captain is helpless, the management clueless and the players hapless. When was the last time you saw a bowler refusing to bowl after the captain asked him to? When was the last time a captain scored one of the slowest half centuries in the modern day game only to accelerate after crossing the landmark? When was the last time a team tried different pair of openers only to keep the captain in the top order?
What Pakistan’s ODI team needs is an overhaul with a person like Sarfraz Ahmed at the helm; not Azhar Ali as the captain. Yes, when he did make his debut as captain, he seemed like a good choice but then, any one is better than Shahid Afridi, any day. What the ODI team lacks is firepower because the players don’t have any clue as to what they are supposed to do and how. In contrast, the very players have stretched their winning streak to 4 against the World Champions and the finalists of World T20. Impressive, isn’t it? The ODI team must learn from the exploits of the T20 squad where the players play to make their captain happy, not for their own place in the side.
And then there is Sarfraz’s captaincy -- the wicket-keeper batsman looks in control of the side even when the chips are down. The same can’t be said for Azhar Ali for whom the chips are hardly up -- wrong team selection, incorrect batting order and most importantly, improper bowling changes. He must fight for the inclusion of those players who are not in the squad rather than agree to the inclusion of Wahab Riaz and Rahat Ali who have been tried, tested and have failed. Rumman Raees seems a much better bowler than Rahat yet the Test pacer finds a place in the side despite the fact that he doesn’t know how to find the right line. Wahab Riaz has been going for runs in all formats of the game yet no one drops him for a youngster.
And by the way, is it Pakistan side or Left Armers XI because with Mohammad Amir, Wahab Riaz, Rahat Ali, Imad Wasim and Mohammad Nawaz in the final XI, Pakistan poses a one-dimensional attack which might look good now but will create problems in future.
Before we conclude, let’s talk about the person responsible for Pakistan’s presence at number 9 in One Day International rankings -- Shahid Afridi. The former captain now wants to be given a proper farewell but he has forgotten that farewell is given to those who leave cricket, not making leaving cricket a joke. He has retired on more than a dozen times in his entire career and wasn’t even serious when he said that the last World Cup would be his final swansong. Since his forced exit from the national lineup, the T20 team has been doing well under Sarfraz Ahmed and that is enough proof that Shahid Afridi must quietly go into the sunset rather than playing one match and disrupting the team’s progress.