T20 World Cup 2024: Babar Azam and Imad Wasim© Twitter
The Pakistan cricket team’s second successive capitulation in an ICC World Cup has been receiving quite the flak. After an early exit from the ODI World Cup 2023, Pakistan were eliminated from the group stage of the 2024 T20 World Cup. What was even more disheartening for a Pakistan fan was that the team went out after losses against USA and India. Against the latter, Pakistan came close but could not make full use of a commanding situation.
Ramiz Raja, former Pakistan cricket team captain and ex-Pakistan Cricket Board chief, lost his cool while decoding the side’s poor show.
“Aapne choon-choon ka murabba bana diya hai iss team ko (you have turned this team into a mixture of varied things),” Raja said on hi YouTube channel.
“You brought back old, retired players so that somehow you save your face in the T20 World Cup…(you) let some of the good talent slip away just because this is a World Cup and it requires experience, we have to bring back retired players, even if they have bitched about the captain.”
Raja went on to say that this was an age-old blunder by the Pakistan team.
“Aise thodi team chalti hai. Yeh pehle bhi humne kar ke dekh liya tha (the team doesn’t work that way; we have tried this before),” Ramiz said. “I think it was the 2003 World Cup. We gathered all the super stars in that team thinking that experience will come handy. But those were ageing stars, and Pakistan couldn’t be saved. We got beaten badly there as well.”
“You have to see who to play, what is the captain’s role. Unless you allow the leadership to flourish in this environment, let them take decision, introduce discipline and merit, and not try to run it (the team) from the sidelines, unless you have the cricket IQ and thinking and take good decisions morally and cricket-wise, until that time it’s almost impossible for this team to get back up on its legs,” Ramiz said.
“You will now find sacrificial lambs to save your place. That’s not how you run cricket.”
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