'There's no one who can stand in front of him right now' - Rashid Latif defends Babar Azam amid captaincy debate

Pakistan skipper Babar Azam won two ICC accolades on Thursday, January 26 when he was crowned ICC Men's Cricketer of the Year, as well as the Men's ODI Player of the Year. He was tremendous in the calendar year 2022, scoring over 2600 runs across formats.

Now, even though his batting was lauded by everyone, his captaincy was heavily criticised. Under his leadership, Pakistan lost the finals of the Asia Cup and the T20 World Cup last year and the team also failed to do well in the Test series against Australia, England and New Zealand. Following which, many former cricketers including Kamran Akmal and Shoaib Akhtar have asked him to relinquish his position in the recent past.

However, former skipper, Rashid Latif doesn’t believe in the same philosophy and stated that there’s no one in the Pakistan team who can replace Babar Azam as the next leader of the Men in Green. He stated that Shadab Khan is not fit most of the time while Shaheen Shah Afridi is injured at the moment and hence, Babar is the best possible option at the moment.

“You tell me the options. How much does Shadab (Khan) play? He misses 50 percent matches due to injury. He is not an option. If Shadab is available throughout, I would've said myself that Babar can step down. Shaheen (Afridi) is out of injury as well. There's only one guy who plays all the matches,” said Latif on his YouTube channel.

The 54-year-old also mentioned that something similar happened to Sarfaraz Ahmed previously and the Pakistan team is yet to recover from that.

“Whatever is happening to Babar right now, the same thing happened to Sarfaraz a few years ago. That was a big mistake and we raised our voices against that. It was a very bad move. We still haven't recovered from that."

"If you think you can do a reset after removing Babar from captaincy... you said that the players are complaining (about Babar). There's no one who can stand in front of him right now,” the former cricketer added.

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