PAK vs NZ: Former Pakistani wicketkeeper-batter Kamran Akmal criticized Babar Azam, the current captain of the national cricket team, for his poor leadership during the T20 International series against New Zealand. Akmal said on his YouTube channel that the captain has not developed his leadership skills in the past four years. Kamran also said that mistakes were made in the last T20I due to improper utilisation of the team’s bowlers. Watch the video below. Follow PAK vs NZ LIVE updates with InsideSport.IN
“We lost because of our own mistakes and nobody is ready to accept that. In the last T20I, we made blunders, we didn’t use our bowlers properly. We failed to defend a good total with our bowlers who have done well in the recent past,” he said.
“If you talk about all this, they say we are criticising. There is a difference between performance and captaincy. Who is talking about performance, we are not blind, we are seeing captaincy. It’s been four years and still, he [Babar] doesn’t know how to do captaincy,” Kamran highlighted.
The veteran cricketer believes that Babar, who is also his cousin, should have used Iftikhar Ahmed when left-handers Mark Chapman and Jimmy Neesham formed a match-winning partnership during the fifth and decisive T20I in Rawalpindi.
“If both the left-handed batsmen were on the crease, the logical choice would have been to give the ball to Iftikhar Ahmed. But instead, we saw the leg-spinner Shadab Khan being given the over and was being continuously smashed by the New Zealand batters,” he said.
Akmal claimed that Pakistani cricket is struggling. “Our main bowlers conceded 40+ runs which cost us. We need to think about it,” he concluded.
A 121-run stand between Chapman and Neesham helped New Zealand win the fifth T20I and tie the five-match series at 2-2. The two nations will now square off in a five-match ODI series starting from April 27 in Rawalpindi.
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