Srinagar: In another controversial statement former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar has termed Azam Khan as better captaincy than Babar Azam.
Akhtar during a chat on the country’s news channel Suno News was talking about Azam Khan when he took a cheeky dig at Babar; Azam has set the Pakistan Super League (PSL) on fire with consistent performances for his side Islamabad United.
In the franchise’s previous match against Karachi Kings, Azam scored an unbeaten 72 off just 41 deliveries as United chased down a 202-run target with four balls to spare.
“I found Azam Khan as a responsible guy who can build the innings, not just slog. He spoke smartly in the interview as well, and it felt nice to hear him speak like that as he talked about his performance. When I was playing 20 years ago, I didn’t care how I spoke. But in today’s era, being in media is a part of your job. I can only indicate and pin-point for you, ‘this is a problem, please go and correct it. It’s for your own benefit’. He (Azam) looked like a captaincy material with the way he spoke,” Akhtar said.
Further talking about the same, Akhtar casually name dropped the ‘ICC Player of the Year’ tag, insisting that winning the title isn’t enough for a player to “become a star.” Interestingly, Babar had won the award earlier this year.
“When Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shahid Afridi, and Abdul Razzaq used to play, they would say, ‘the whole ground and its crowd is mine. I control the atmosphere in this place’. And Azam was controlling that. That’s how you become a star. It’s not just about winning ICC Player of the Year awards, no no. The things Azam did… crowd backed him, he took their ownership. He was like, ‘I’m here to run the show’,” said Akhtar.