Babar Azam has been Pakistan's talisman in the batting order for the past few years. Azam is renowned for his strokeplay and proper cricketing shorts, as a part of his game.
After the ODI World Cup 2023, the 30-year-old was scrapped off his captaincy role. All of the changes, however, were negated in under four months after Azam was re-appointed as Pakistan skipper.
Right before Pakistan's 4th T20 game against, he called out the Pakistan team management for the reshuffle in the batting order. Pakistan received a bashing at the hands of a third-string Kiwi side after as many as 16 first-team players were unavailable for selection.
The Green Shirts suffered a loss in the penultimate over, as the Blackcaps chased the 179-run target with ten balls to spare. Pakistan put up 178 on the board, courtesy of Shadab Khan's quickfire 41 after Babar Azam hit 37 early on in the innings.
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What did Babar Azam say about the batting position reshuffle in the Pakistan team?
Babar Azam has spoken about the recent controversy of the batting order shuffle in the Pakistan team. The skipper has come out and slammed the Pakistan management for suggesting a reshuffling of the batting order and players' positions.
In the pre-match press conference, Azam said,
I never change my plans for Pakistan Cricket Team under external pressures. We are changing batting positions by taking batters in confidence. There is nothing like any player is unhappy with the decision of rotation policy, Babar Azam spoke about Pakistan's batting order reshuffle.
What is the controversy in Pakistan Cricket?
Mohammad Rizwan has been playing as an opener for the most time of his career. The wicket-keeper-batter is one of the senior batters in the team, and his batting position has been in dilemma in the past few months.
The captaincy shuffling between Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi has been uncomfortable to adjust for Mohammad Rizwan. Rizwan and Babar Azam have been Pakistan's opening combination in the T20I format for some time now.
However, with Shaheen Afridi's captaincy switch, Azam was demoted to number 3, with Rizwan and Saim Ayub opening the innings for Pakistan.
With Azam's re-appointment, Rizwan has now been demoted to the third position.
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