'Babar Azam doesn't have a voice': Former Pakistan batter cites Virat Kohli example in T20 World Cup rant

Karachi—The experiment that saw Babar Azam relegated to No. 4 has been branded a failure by former Pakistan batter Basit Ali, who insists the ex-captain should have refused the demotion rather than meekly accept a role that ultimately sidelined him at critical moments of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

Babar’s tournament unravelled in plain sight. After labouring to time the ball in the middle order throughout the 20-nation event, he was not required at all in the must-win group-stage meeting with Namibia and was then dropped for the Super 8 encounter against Sri Lanka, a match Pakistan needed to win by 65 runs to keep their semi-final dream alive. The gamble did not pay off, and Pakistan exited the competition with questions ringing louder than the answers provided.

Speaking on the Game Plan show, Basit Ali tore into the management’s handling of the situation and placed part of the blame on the batter himself. “Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman don’t have a voice. How come they agreed to bat in the middle order?” Basit asked. “If I were his close aide, I would have told him to refuse. You just threw him under the bus.”

To underline his point, Basit invoked Virat Kohli’s recent trajectory. “Virat Kohli was not made the captain, he said, ‘Okay bye’. He took the retirement… He doesn’t have a shortage of money.” Basit argued that Babar, like Kohli, should have taken a firm stand against head coach Mike Hesson and the team think-tank instead of allowing himself to be shuffled down the order.

Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket in May last year, although no official link has been made between that decision and captaincy politics. With Kohli and Rohit Sharma no longer in the five-day leadership frame, Shubman Gill was handed the Test reins and guided India to a drawn Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy against England.

Not everyone shares Basit’s hard-line view. Kamran Akmal, the former Pakistan wicketkeeper-batter, countered that players battling poor form rarely challenge authority. “No player dares to go against the team management,” Akmal said. “When the form is not there, no player says such things… A batter would even agree to bat at No. 8.”

The debate leaves Pakistan’s T20 blueprint under fresh scrutiny. Babar’s silence, whether voluntary or enforced, has become as topical as the batting order that failed to fire when the stakes were highest.

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