Of course I know that, which is why I believe that Azhar is quite a talented batsman. How many players can start their careers as leg-spinners, pick up batting in their early 20's and go on to be average 45 and 50 in Test and ODI cricket?
Yes he worked hard, but he had the talent to match his hard work. Not everyone can improve exponentially like Azhar or Steve Smith.
As far as putting his averages and not outs on the side, again, you believe that he was a selfish player who was not interested in the success of Pakistan cricket but his personal milestones only, which is just distasteful. How are you so sure of his intentions?
I am not defending him in ODIs, my point is that he performed to the best of his capabilities, but ultimately he proved to be a poor ODI tactician, whose legacy in this format is a team that is in tatters.
You are questioning his motives, I am questioning his limitations because that is what I can observe. I cannot look into people's hearts or read their minds to conclude their intentions, but you seem very confident that Misbah was playing for himself.
His team is in tatters?? - as if Misbah was Captain of Australia not Pakistan. This is quite a bit over the top.
Batting in his era is improving. Since he has taken over Pakistan has only once scored below 250, during Misbah's era, we hardly go over 250. He is leading from the front quite literally, taken the burden of new ball on his own shoulders. Consistent opening leads to high score, as long as opening seldom fails we will get big scores.
What did Misbah left for him?
He inherited all bad investments of Misbah, Hafeez and Ajmal most high profile investments gone bad, he has to start from scratch. Misbah was wining almost all Odis on back of their bowling, which he cannot leverage. He has to start from scratch [emoji47][emoji47]
On batting front, Misbah never invested in openers, he was the best player of new ball in Pakistan for sometime, but was never got selected in odi.
His batting
Pakistan has tried many opening combinations in test for last 6 years, but one down remains Azhar, that tells something, and he hardly failed for reasonable period of time. Even when we were in SA, he faced the most number of new balls, where as Hafeez used to get out in first over of Steyn.
Not just that he pull/cut and drive better than almost everybody else. Because of that he can score almost run a ball in first 10 overs in Odis, where as Shezad and Hafeez struggles. He is strong on front foot, where as other openers hardly move their feet.
He is not a great player of spin, but you need new ball batsman as opener. His spin credentials had improved a lot in last 12 months, another reason I was adamant of his selection as odi opener for WC.
BTW: Test batting is about building temperament , strong defense and less about talent, well by talent means fast reflexes, good hand eye coordination etc. that's why guys like Cook, Dravid, Chandar paul, Langer, YK, etc have long test careers, they were not that talented but had great temperament. Their temperament helped them over come their talent and increase their games range. Where as guys like VIV, KP, Lara, Tendulakar were lot about talent then temperament.
He is hard worker, so far he has not taken things for granted. Even on SL tour, he dealt with Herath threat head on, and score vitals runs against him. We worked on tactics to counter Herat after first test.
Captaincy
I would not read too much into his or anybody's captaincy so early. He is building the team from scratch, he has yet to play with his best bowlers (Wahab and Irfan) in a single match, result of BD series would have being different.
There is a famous saying in cricket, 'Captain is as good as bowlers he has'
When you are new to captaincy, and somebody take away 3/4 (Wahab/Irfan, Ajmal, Hafeez, Afridi) of your bowlers, how can you keep on wining? After Ajmal was banned, Midbah lost 12 of the 15 Odis, his experience did not helped.
Captaincy is overrated in cricket, Pakistanis pass time is gossip and politics, they love to focus on non issues.
I like him as captain because he is a team player and less controversial personality. I don't like this habit of changing captains, this shows an immature and illiterate culture. In 90s we were all star team with too many cooks, where as in 80s we achieve more with far less resources.
I really like that in last 4/5 years we had only one captain. I care less about who is the captain it's more important to have consistency. Let him run for 4/5 years. The only requirement I have for captain is that he should be in playing 11 on merit. Which he does easily for both test and odi team. You cannot make a guy captain whose place is not guaranteed. Also, odi captain should be test player as well, it's again sign of mature culture.
Pakistan bowling stock is decent
Pakistan bowling stock is not that great right now because we lost main bowlers to chucking charges even then in WC we were in top 3/4 bowling units.
Azhar has to rebuild the attack, find and carve all rounders, this is not going to happen in 2/4 months.
Fans hope right now are on the Amir, Wahab and possibly Asif that can improve fasting balling a whole lot better than what we have right now.
With Amir, Wahab and Yasir, you are not just getting wicket taking world class bowlers but batsman who can remove the notion of long tail and more than decent fielders. If fit, they can take Pakistan to top 2/3 of both odi and test. Cricket teams start from bowling unit. I am eager to see how these three shape up Pakistani attack in next 2/3 years [emoji2][emoji2]
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