England have also been criticized for the same with Zak Crawley. Mcullum has time and again told the press to get lost and has ignored everybody and given Crawley guarantees that he won't be dropped come what may for an entire 5 Test Series. And this is after his stats were making negative records and people were begging for his exclusion before the series started.
I feel if you back a struggling player, you have to tell them they are first choice till 'X' time and you're not going to drop them in the middle of the series no matter what. No matter how good the player, everyone plays worse under pressure or if they know one bad performance can end their career. As a batsman one mistake can literally end your career and making a player play T20s under such conditions is cruel. To be very honest, everyone knew the game was over as soon as Babar and Rizwan were out. It's just that Khushdil batted too slow for everyone's taste. It was selfish, but really not especially or extremely so. Maybe there was some 1% chance of Pakistan winning if he had exploded from Ball 1. Knowing his capabilities and the pressure he was under it's unrealistic.
This issue with Pakistan is broader than Khushdil. I don't want to come across as over-critical of Pakistan's cricketing culture, which in many ways is better than ours, but it seems like nobody in Pakistan has an understanding of sample size, variance or statistics. At any rate if they do, they can't get to a position in charge. Pakistan continuously chops and changes players and there is almost nobody who can keep their place through two bad series. That's not conducive to giving players the right frame of mind.
Yes Khushdil has played 34 international matches. I doubt he's played a single game with the confidence of knowing that he's going to play if he has two bad games in a row. Many Pakistan players play 60/70 games like that. You cannot play T20 well on that basis. Take a look at Rishabh Pant and his T20I stats it's basically similar to Khusdhil. Ok, you can say Khushdil Shah has no talent as a cricketer. Nobody can say this about Rishabh Pant, but if you are batted down the order, given no security and constantly under pressure, no one will perform. Pant can't do it in T20s even though his place in other formats is secure, he is viewed as a generational talent by many and he's even captained India a few months back.
Pakistan always has a chance because there's a lot of talent, but a better process is needed of handling players.