"Lot of changes in captaincy is not good"- Inzamam-ul-Haq backs Babar Azam to lead Pakistan in all formats
Newly-appointed chief selector and former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq believes Babar Azam is the right man to lead the Men in Green across all three formats.
There has been a bit of talk about the need for Pakistan to have split captaincy, but Inzamam discarded such suggestions by explaining how he had to deal with such a situation the last time he was the chief selector.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Pakistan's ODI series against Bangladesh, here's what Inzamam-ul-Haq had to say about Babar Azam:
"See, lot of changes in captaincy is not good. I think Babar is doing great captaincy, and when I was chief selector before, Sarfaraz Ahmed was not captain of all three formats, but he became captain of all three formats later. So, I feel, there should be one captain of all three formats, if he plays in all three formats. So, he should know how he has to take his players forward."
Inzamam-ul-Haq on Shan Masood's exclusion
Shan Masood was initially also the vice-captain of the ODI team and seemed to be a certainty in Pakistan's Asia Cup squad. But a few eyebrows were raised when the southpaw was dropped from the squad.
Inzamam-ul-Haq spoke about why that decision was taken. Here's what he was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo:
"Shan has performed very well on the whole across formats. Unfortunately, his performances in ODIs have gone down. We have a list of 20-21 players, and Shan is part of that. But Saud Shakeel and a couple of other players were impressive recently, so we had to leave out Shan. But he is a part of our plans."
Pakistan's ODI Squad for Afghanistan series and Asia Cup: Babar Azam (capt), Shadab Khan, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Fakhar Zaman, Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Saud Shakeel, Salman Ali Agha, Iftikhar Ahmed, Mohammad Nawaz, Usama Mir, Haris Rauf, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Tayyab Tahir, Mohammad Haris (wk), Faheem Ashraf, Mohammad Wasim.