Babar Azam. (Photo Source: X(Twitter)
Former Pakistan captain Ramiz Raja has advised Babar Azam to stay out of social media after his flop show in the first Test against Bangladesh in Rawalpindi. The 29-year-old failed to open his tally in the first innings and made only 22 runs in the second as Bangladesh handed Pakistan an embarrassing 10-wicket defeat.
Notably, Babar has scored only 275 runs at an average of 21.15 in the last seven Tests. Pakistan’s losing streak in the longest format is also a matter of concern, which eventually infuriated the fans and former cricketers, and that resulted in Babar getting hammered on various social media platforms.
Defending Babar, Raja claimed that the headline is always about how the prior goes about business and added that in the era of social media, everyone has the power to criticise and ridicule any cricketer.
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“It seems the entire nation does not have a problem with anything except the form of Babar Azam. Unfortunately what happens is when you lose a match and you have not scored runs and if you are Babar Azam, then you become a headline – How did we lose? What did he do? What was his contribution? And then this is the era of Social Media. Anybody can criticize and ridicule anyone, this should be discouraged as much as possible,” Raja said on his YouTube channel.
Raja is also worried about Pakistan’s decline in international cricket. He mentioned that the fans identify themselves with success stories but Pakistan haven’t seen any in recent times. They failed to qualify for the semi-finals of the ODI World Cup 2023, went on to lose the Test series against Australia, followed by a T20I series defeat in New Zealand and recently, they failed to qualify for the Super Eights of the T20 World Cup 2024.
“Cricket is in our blood but don’t know for how long if we continue to lose matches like this in Test cricket. Fan following increases with wins and fans identify themselves with success stories. Babar Azam has had a famous success story. There is no doubt that he has been a big player in all three formats,” he said.