Former Pakistan opening batsman Aamer Sohail believes that the Men in Green’s limited-overs captain, Babar Azam, has a faulty batting technique.
Azam features in the top five of International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings for batsmen in all formats with first, third and fifth position in T20Is, ODIs and Tests respectively.
The former left-handed batsman pointed out the flaw in Azam’s trigger movement, while also urging head coach-cum-chief selector Misbahul Haq to fix the issue.
“There is a fault in Babar Azam’s technique related to his setup and stance. His trigger movement is slightly off, which could be because he wants to avoid getting bowled or LBW, but if he can correct that he can get into a better position and dominate the bowlers even more,” said Sohail while talking on his official YouTube channel.
“I hope that Misbahul Haq would have already identified this and will do what’s necessary to fix this issue as this will make Babar an even bigger threat for the opposition,” he added.
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Sohail also believes that Azam needs to learn the art of scoring runs through singles and doubles, incase boundaries are hard to come by.
“Inorder to become a great player, Babar needs to realize that there will come a point where he won’t be able to score runs easily,” he said. “Over 40 per cent of his runs comes through boundaries but at times he won’t be able to hit them at will. To counter that he will have to play sensibly and score runs in singles and doubles but he needs to learn this art first.”
The 53-year-old also stressed the importance of keeping a healthy dressing room environment.
“He needs to make his teammates better by inspiring them through his batting. He needs to create a good environment in the dressing room and stay away from politics” he said.
The Lahore-born also asked the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to give full support to Azam and avoid treating him like former captain Sarfaraz Ahmed.
“The PCB also needs to support him and don’t treat him like Sarfaraz Ahmed. Babar needs to be backed, if you have given him the responsibility to lead the side,” he said. “Every player goes through bad patches but that does not mean that you completely discard them. PCB will have to accept Babar’s failures, as well, inorder to avoid shattering his confidence.”
It must be noted that, Sohail had a long and illustrious career having represented the Men in Green in 47 Tests and 156 One-Day Internationals (ODIs), scoring 2823 runs and 4780 runs, respectively.