ISLAMABAD
\nAustralian great Ricky Ponting believes Pakistan look like a much more settled team with Babar Azam at the helm and has nominated a young batter at the top of the order who is ready to turn heads at the ICC Men\u2019s T20 World Cup.
\nBabar was reinstated as Pakistan\u2019s white-ball captain earlier this year following a brief period where star fast bowler Shaheen Afridi was in charge in the shortest format of the game. And Ponting thinks Pakistan\u2019s chances of going one better than their runner-up finish at the most recent edition of the T20 World Cup in Australia in 2022 and matching their sole title success from 2009, appear much brighter with Babar in charge.
\n\u201cCaptaincy just sits well with some people and it doesn\u2019t sit well with others,\u201d Ponting told The ICC Review. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it through the years that some of the best players that have ever played the game have not necessarily made the best captains and the thing that makes some of the very best players so good is how focused they are on what they need to do to get better and to be the best and find a way every day to get better. \u201cAnd when you are captain, you can\u2019t do that. You\u2019ve got to actually compartmentalise what you\u2019re doing, look after your own game, look after all the guys around you. So some guys can manage that better than others.
\n\u201cI reckon Babar, when he first started, I had that feeling that he\u2026 because if you look at his record, his numbers went down on the back of it. So I think he might have learned a bit from that.\u201d \u201cShaheen didn\u2019t set the world on fire as a leader either, so I think going back into a World Cup it just looks like a more settled team when you\u2019ve got someone like Babar as captain rather than Afridi.\u201d
\nWhile much of Pakistan\u2019s fortunes at the T20 World Cup will rest with Babar and reliable lieutenant Mohammad Rizwan, Ponting believes there is a young batter at the top of their batting order that might cause a surprise. Saim Ayub opened the batting alongside Rizwan during Pakistan\u2019s recent T20I series against Ireland and Ponting thinks the hard-hitting left-hander may be worth keeping an eye on at the T20 World Cup. \u201cI loved the look of Ayub out here during the Australian summer,\u201d Ponting noted.
\nHe played that Test match in Sydney, I reckon it was and I didn\u2019t know much about him then. \u201cWhen I\u2019m sitting there commentating, I like to know about players and what they can do, so I actually went back and had a look at some of his PSL stuff. \u201cAnd he\u2019s a proper player. I think he\u2019s a real star in the making.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD Australian great Ricky Ponting believes Pakistan look like a much more settled team with Babar Azam at the helm and has nominated a young batter at the top of the order who is ready to turn heads at the ICC Men\u2019s T20 World Cup. Babar was reinstated as Pakistan\u2019s white-ball captain earlier this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-411114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n