Pakistan's new captain

Pakistan once again was shown the exit door of the world cup very early in the tournament. In fact this time, Pakistan had the honor of being the very first team to be eliminated from the world cup. As usual a dismal world cup performance will be followed by a “re vamp” of the entire team, the cricket board and the selection committee.

As a starter Inzamam has already retired from ODIs and has relinquished captaincy from the test side. This will leave a huge void in the batting order and the cricket chiefs of Pakistan will also have to look for a new captain. In my mind this is a decision that needs to be properly thought out. There seems to be huge lobby, mainly in the form of the great Imran Khan, to appoint Younis Khan as Pakistan’s next in charge. Younis has had a good career in Test cricket, but his ODI performance has been extremely ordinary. Younis Khan, some may argue, does not even merit a place in the ODI side. Furthermore, he has scored only 84 runs in the 6 outings he has had as captain. Moreover, in pressure situations Younis Khan has proved to be a complete disaster for Pakistan batting at number 3. Imran khan correctly points out that it is always easier to prevent a collapse rather than rescuing the team out of a collapse. That has been Inzamam’s biggest criticism through out his reign as captain, since he decided to demote him self in the batting order. Imran khan’s point is that the captain should play up front in the line up and lead the team by his example. In Inzamam’s case this was not happening. He was batting at number 5 and by the time he got to the crease Pakistan was usually already on the back foot. But, every body had hope in Inzamam. They knew that Inzi could rescue Pakistan out of the shackles that they had tangled themselves in to.

In Younis, Pakistan will have a captain who will go up the order and bat at number three, granted. But, the idea is not to bat at that position, in fact it is to lead by example. How can one expect a person who averages in the mid 20’s as 1 down against test playing nations in a career spanning 150+ games to lead from the front? What kind of example can you expect him to set? If he continues to play as he has in his career this far, we will soon realize that it is better to have a captain who bats at number 5 and tries to salvage an innings rather than a captain who bats at number three and can neither prevent a collapse nor try to come out of one.

Pakistan XI after the WC:
Yasir Hameed
Imran Nazir
Shoaib Malik (captain)
Mohammad Yousuf
Asim Kamal
Abdul Razzak
Shahid Afridi
Zulqarnain
Rao Iftikhar
Muhammad Asif
Shoaib Akhtar
Salman Butt (12th man).

Asim kamal, only if they want to look among the experienced players, other wise a new talent (Fawad Alam) could also be tested.