June 12 (Punjab Khabarnama) : After a poor start to the T20 World Cup, Babar Azam and Co. have been facing criticism from all corners. The Pakistan team was served a reality check by co-hosts USA in their opening match, who won the thrilling tie in Super Over. The star-studded Pakistan line-up crumbled under pressure against a non-Test playing nation but they repeated the same mistakes in batting department versus arch-rivals India. However, they managed to bounce back in the third match against Canada to claim their first win of the tournament.
Babar, ICC’s number 3-ranked T20I batter, has not been up to the mark and failed to inspire his team in crunch situations. He has been under the scanner for his underwhelming strike rate and poor captaincy thus far.
Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt has joined the bandwagon of players taking shots at Babar. A few Pakistan players have given the ‘moniker’ king to Babar, which is also associated with batting maestro Virat Kohli. Meanwhile, Butt called it self-proclamation by the Pakistan captain and slammed him for comparison with the Indian star.
“There is self-proclamation that our captain is the king and the other is the world’s best fast bowler. Sometimes we compare this guy with (Jasprit) Bumrah and him (Babar) with (Virat) Kohli…Okay, you touched ICC (top) ranking at one point, but also touched reality sometime. Are you able to win a match on your own? Is there a standing of our team? It’s similar to those YouTube thumbnails that you are enticed to click and open once,” Salman said in a video which has gone viral on social media.
Butt further accused the Pakistan stars of running paid campaigns on social media to get attention and asserted that it’s time to pull them back on the earth.
“Besides its good things, one bad thing about social media is that you can get anything done by paid campaigns…your decisions are based on paid campaigns. We should bring these self-proclaimed greats back on earth and (tell them to) stay who they are. First win a match, a big tournament, fight it out to win against a big team, finish a match single-handedly, then think what you want to proclaim.”
