Lahore
\nKamran Akmal, Pakistan\u2019s former wicketkeeper-batter, sledged national cricket team captain Babar Azam for his poor captaincy skills in the T20 International series against New Zealand.
\nAkmal, taking to his YouTube channel, said the 28-year-old skipper hasn\u2019t learnt to do captaincy even in the four years.
\nThe ex-member of the national men\u2019s team \u2014 who has played 53 Tests, 157 ODIs and 58 T20Is \u2014 said blunders were made in the last T20I, as bowlers in the team were not used properly.
\n\u201cWe lost because of our own mistakes and nobody is ready to accept that. In the last T20I, we made blunders, we didn\u2019t use our bowlers properly. We failed to defend a good total with our bowlers who have done well in the recent past,\u201d he said.
\nAkmal added that there is a difference between performance and captaincy.
\n\u201cIf you talk about all this, they say we are criticising. There is a difference between performance and captaincy. Who is talking about performance, we are not blind, we are seeing captaincy. It\u2019s been four years and still, he [Babar] doesn\u2019t know how to do captaincy,\u201d the former wicketkeeper-batter highlighted.
\nThe 41-year-old veteran cricketer thinks that Babar, who is also his cousin, should have utilised Iftikhar Ahmed when Mark Chapman and Jimmy Neesham, both left-handers, built a match-winning partnership during the fifth and series-deciding T20I in Rawalpindi.
\n\u201cIf both the left-handed batsmen were on the crease, the logical choice would have been to give the ball to Iftikhar Ahmed. But instead, we saw the leg-spinner Shadab Khan being given the over and was being continuously smashed by the New Zealand batters,\u201d he said.
\nAkmal said that cricket in Pakistan is suffering. \u201cOur main bowlers conceded 40+ runs which cost us. We need to think about it,\u201d he concluded.
\nChapman and Neesham scored a match-winning partnership of 121 runs as New Zealand won the fifth T20I to level the five-match series 2-2. The two teams will now meet in five-match ODI series, starting on April 27 in Rawalpindi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lahore Kamran Akmal, Pakistan\u2019s former wicketkeeper-batter, sledged national cricket team captain Babar Azam for his poor captaincy skills in the T20 International series against New Zealand. Akmal, taking to his YouTube channel, said the 28-year-old skipper hasn\u2019t learnt to do captaincy even in the four years. The ex-member of the national men\u2019s team \u2014 who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-327762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n