Shoaib Malik would’ve been a better choice as Pakistan T20 skipper: Shahid Afridi

The recent 3-0 drubbing at the hands of Sri Lanka, has rung the alarm bells in the Pakistan cricket camp. On an immediate basis, the country’s cricket board sacked Sarfaraz Ahmed as the Test and T20I skipper. The 32-year-old also lost his place in the national team for the tour of Australia. Even as Azhar Ali has been appointed as the Test captain, Babar Azam has been given the mantle in T20Is.

Misbah-ul-Haq, the coach-cum-selector was reportedly unhappy with Sarfaraz’s approach that led to the latter’s dismissal. In the meantime, Shahid Afridi, the former Pakistan all-rounder, doesn’t quite agree with Babar’s appointment as the T20I skipper, though he reckons that he is a class act.

Afridi wants Malik as captain until 2020 T20 World Cup

Afridi feels that it would’ve been batter to make Shoaib Malik the skipper in the shortest format at least until the 2020 T20 World Cup in Australia. Pakistan is ICC’s number-one ranked T20I team and is being deemed as one of the strong contenders to win the championship next year.

“No doubt Babar Azam is the backbone of the team, he is a consistent performer. However, given that the T20I World Cup is coming up, giving the T20I captaincy to Shoaib Malik would have been a more sensible move. The best move would have been to appoint Shoaib Malik as captain till the World Cup,” Afridi was quoted as saying on his YouTube channel.

As far as Malik is concerned, he has captained Pakistan in 20 T20Is and has 13 victories under his belt. The last time he led was in the three-match away series versus South Africa in February 2019 that the visitors lost 1-2. Malik also was the skipper in 41 ODIs out of which Pakistan won 25.

Lately, he shone as the captain in the seventh edition of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). Under the veteran’s leadership, the Guyana Amazon Warriors won 11 matches on the trot and slumped only in the final versus the Barbados Tridents at the Brain Lara Stadium, Tarouba in Trinidad.

He was also one of their top performers with the bat in hand. At the international level, Malik has played 111 contests in which he has scored 2,263 runs at an average of 30.58 with seven half-centuries. Back in July 2019, he retired from ODI cricket after the World Cup in England and Wales.

[interaction id=”5da07a3f923548163317453b”]