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Selfish batting of Babar Azam will not let him fulfill his potential

srh

Senior T20I Player
Joined
Jan 25, 2009
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18,288
Babar Azam is a good batsman. But he has a selfish streak in his batting which will not let him become a great batsman if he does not control his selfishness. We saw it in Australia tour and it has been shown repeatedly afterwards. To become a great batsman he has to think for the team first.
 
I agree. Playing 6 consecutive dot balls when you are chasing 8 per over. Amazing.
 
Where is the selfishness? He was trying to set himself and unfortunately found a fielder for a good shot. Can't really help.
 
I wont call it selfish but just that he is not the protagonist we are looking for. The problem is with his attitude. He is too soft and takes things lightly in a bad way. His attitude reminds me of umar amin these days.. zero intensity and zero enthusiasm.

So far he has just looked like a player who can play the supporting role and not the one who can be the mainstay of the batting.
 
I agree. Playing 6 consecutive dot balls when you are chasing 8 per over. Amazing.

Have you seen how poorly Rohit and Kohli batted in the middle overs? Even the best of batsmen can find it difficult to catch the rhythm. Hopefully Babar can make it count against South Africa.
 
If there is one bastman in our tea who should set himself in it should be babar. How can you call him selfish given his results? And the continual presence of hafeez and shahzad in the team
 
Its about mindset

I mean our players all knew from the start the target they had to chase was 7 going on 8

So why apart from azhar in small patches and malik didnt anyone else show any urgency in taking quick singles and looking for boundaries?

i mean playing out 7-8 dot balls in a row whne the rr required is 8 an over is criminal absolutely criminal
 
Look at the game of the senior players of this team. He probably does as well and he feels he is the best player in the team. If his objective is to be the best player in an 8th ranked team he has met it.
Ppl will talk about age and all this nonsense. But his approach is clear. He plays for himself.
Still early days
 
Disclaimer: Most of the Pakistani batsmen are selfish in nature. But those batsmen are not that talented so its not a great loss. But Babar is talented and so his selfishness stands out and bother more than others.
 
Have you not all see how babar bats? he needs a little time to get in and he usually picks it up later in the innings.
 
He likes to take his time to construct his innings. He just needs to learn to bring in a bit more urgency into his game also he is playing with guys like Mohammad Hafeez and Azhar Ali when he needs guys like Sharjeel Khan, Shoaib Malik, Khalid Latif. Players who in this kind of match would be looking at getting the 7-8 runs an over.
 
Babar is not the 'dynamic' batsman that many people here make him out to be. He's another one in the long line of accumulators we have in our current team. The only difference being he's much more consistent at scoring than the rest. He's clearly not at the level everyone thinks he's at. Is he the best accumulator out of the current lot? Yes, he is. But his innings lack impact.
 
Babar was 1 (9) or something early on. Played a maiden at such a critical juncture. He deserves to be criticized and might have taken a bit of pressure off of Azhar, who was doing fine at the other end. Instead, he contributed to it, along with Shehzad and Hafeez.
 
I think Babar (somewhat) suffers from the same problems and symptoms as Amir. Both are good players but not the type around which you can build a team, since both don't create enough impact to seize control of the match and alter the outcome.

Amir doesn't take enough wickets and Babar's style of accumulation does not do enough damage to the opposition. 110 (120) type knocks on a good day does not win matches for a poor team like Pakistan. Someone summed it well the other day: "he is easy on the eyes and easy on the opposition".

Amir will serve better as a support bowler if we had a genuine strike bowler. Babar also will have more value for his runs if we had an aggressive top order batter. In Sharjeel's presence Babar simply looked a more effective player, since his explosive starts allowed Babar time and opportunity to construct an innings at his pace. Haris for that matter is not the answer either, accumulators in this era are pointless without aggressors to back them up.
 
It's very unfair to call today's inning selfish. He got set, tried attacking & got out whilst trying to dispatch the ball to the fence.

He did have that knock against the WI, where everything seem to stop whilst he approached 100, however, that was a one off and to call him selfish - specially after today's inning (if you can call it that) - is completely unjustified IMO
 
I think Babar (somewhat) suffers from the same problems and symptoms as Amir. Both are good players but not the type around which you can build a team, since both don't create enough impact to seize control of the match and alter the outcome.

Amir doesn't take enough wickets and Babar's style of accumulation does not do enough damage to the opposition. 110 (120) type knocks on a good day does not win matches for a poor team like Pakistan. Someone summed it well the other day: "he is easy on the eyes and easy on the opposition".

Amir will serve better as a support bowler if we had a genuine strike bowler. Babar also will have more value for his runs if we had an aggressive top order batter. In Sharjeel's presence Babar simply looked a more effective player, since his explosive starts allowed Babar time and opportunity to construct an innings at his pace. Haris for that matter is not the answer either, accumulators in this era are pointless without aggressors to back them up.

Great to see someone who isn't deluded
 
Great to see someone who isn't deluded

Haris would be an improvement on Hafeez but in matches like these he will not take the team anywhere. At best, add 10 more runs to what Hafeez produced today and that is not enough in a situation like this.
 
Babar is a good player to build an innings around if you have more dynamic players around him.
 
Haris would be an improvement on Hafeez but in matches like these he will not take the team anywhere. At best, add 10 more runs to what Hafeez produced today and that is not enough in a situation like this.

But in terms of mindset, Haris is the same as every other Pakistani batsman.

He too would've played dots at the start of his innings like every batsman did today except Malik.

I don't remember a single match in Haris' limited career in which he showed intent early on.

I agree with the latter part. Haris might average 44 at 85 strike rate, but all that will do is reduce the margin of defeat from 120+ to 90-100.
 
Y searching 4 openers if babar is the talented batsman in the squad make him open with fakhar and if malik is a imprtnt player in his 30's make him play one down vl c wat he has and make sarfarz 2 down as he is not a power hitter he only can rotate chip and push for singles play haris after him then a power hitter faheem or any other from domestic play umar akmal then shadab aamir hassan junaid/abbas/raeess shuld b da best pak line up given players
 
Haris would be an improvement on Hafeez but in matches like these he will not take the team anywhere. At best, add 10 more runs to what Hafeez produced today and that is not enough in a situation like this.

[MENTION=131701]Mamoon[/MENTION] Today it was ideal situation to bat Malik at #4 if our management is so obsessed with past records. He may've had turned match to Pakistan's favor but probably we haven't started thinking this much out of the box.
 
[MENTION=131701]Mamoon[/MENTION] Today it was ideal situation to bat Malik at #4 if our management is so obsessed with past records. He may've had turned match to Pakistan's favor but probably we haven't started thinking this much out of the box.

Sarfraz and Mickey are already risking a lot by demoting ''national treasure'' to number 4. Any lower than that, and both probably risk losing their contracts with ''national treasure'' taking over as captain.
 
Sarfraz and Mickey are already risking a lot by demoting ''national treasure'' to number 4. Any lower than that, and both probably risk losing their contracts with ''national treasure'' taking over as captain.

:)) national treasure should be given in aid to Uganda so that their cricket suffers even more than it already is.
 
Sarfraz and Mickey are already risking a lot by demoting ''national treasure'' to number 4. Any lower than that, and both probably risk losing their contracts with ''national treasure'' taking over as captain.

He (Hafeez) should move to opening so he gets exposed. We can play Fahim or Haris instead of Ahmed Shehzad. Babar needs to man up now, He has 5 centuries to his name, By no means he is new to international cricket, He needs to have a better game plan than just starting slow. Probably even watch the way Kohli started his innings today, He did not play the maiden at such crucial juncture and was ruthless later on, Also needs to establish some power shots he can use every now and then or at end of innings (slog overs).

Basically our players are garbage in slog overs, Or when they have to push on, As if from childhood they have been trained to play it down and nice only without any consideration for tempo in batting.
 
Babar Azam is a good batsman. But he has a selfish streak in his batting which will not let him become a great batsman if he does not control his selfishness. We saw it in Australia tour and it has been shown repeatedly afterwards. To become a great batsman he has to think for the team first.

He can only bat against West Indies
 
He's a top ODI bat.

But he does come across as timid and soft in crunch games and situations.

He needs to be up for big games like these. You can't afford to have a lazy attitude against the top teams. His batting and shot that got him out reflected this today.

However I really thinks he's the least of our problems. He's our bright spark for the future if anything.
 
He will do much better when we have someone like Sharjeel at the top.
We are badly missing Sharjeel and no one in Pakistan domestic comes close to him.
 
It's very unfair to call today's inning selfish. He got set, tried attacking & got out whilst trying to dispatch the ball to the fence.

He did have that knock against the WI, where everything seem to stop whilst he approached 100, however, that was a one off and to call him selfish - specially after today's inning (if you can call it that) - is completely unjustified IMO

what are you about? he has a track record of batting selfishly, which for a young batsman is quite impressive. check his centuries in Australia, check his batting in PSL, check his batting in West Indies, the guy is simply playing for himself right now
 
I think Babar (somewhat) suffers from the same problems and symptoms as Amir. Both are good players but not the type around which you can build a team, since both don't create enough impact to seize control of the match and alter the outcome.

Amir doesn't take enough wickets and Babar's style of accumulation does not do enough damage to the opposition. 110 (120) type knocks on a good day does not win matches for a poor team like Pakistan. Someone summed it well the other day: "he is easy on the eyes and easy on the opposition".

Amir will serve better as a support bowler if we had a genuine strike bowler. Babar also will have more value for his runs if we had an aggressive top order batter. In Sharjeel's presence Babar simply looked a more effective player, since his explosive starts allowed Babar time and opportunity to construct an innings at his pace. Haris for that matter is not the answer either, accumulators in this era are pointless without aggressors to back them up.
How can you even standout in this pathetic team? Forget about Amir or Babar, and just look at it from a closer perspective. The pressure a few of our players are under, knowing fully well they will be thrown under the bus due to the constant failures of others. Virat Kohli has an outstanding batting line-up around that motivates him to play at a better level. Same goes for Warner, Williamson (when Bmac was present), Root, Smith etc. You have to feed off others and stand out. What the heck will Babar do when he has to chase at 9 RPO and he has ZERO confidence in Azhar Ali to support him? What can Amir do when he delivers a few decent overs upfront, only for Wahab to come on and open the floodgates consistently? Put yourself in their shoes. You are asking a bowler and a batsman to standout in an eleven of useless players. And they haven't even established themselves as very good players yet, forget world class. Same goes for Malik. Must be longing for all this torture to be over so he can go back to playing in leagues where he has decent skilled players around him to feed on.

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Umar Akmal was far more talented, sad what he did to throw it all away.

I am not toally sold on Babar yet. He feeds of West Indies
 
It's very unfair to call today's inning selfish. He got set, tried attacking & got out whilst trying to dispatch the ball to the fence.

He did have that knock against the WI, where everything seem to stop whilst he approached 100, however, that was a one off and to call him selfish - specially after today's inning (if you can call it that) - is completely unjustified IMO

It was selfish to the core. Getting set by playing 6 dot balls? what is he, Chris Gayle that he'd murder bowling later on?

He has worse power game than infamous Fawad Alam, and gets bogged down when scoring rate is 6+. Has not won a single game when chasing (plus most of his performances have been against a weak Windies side)
 
It was selfish to the core. Getting set by playing 6 dot balls? what is he, Chris Gayle that he'd murder bowling later on?

He has worse power game than infamous Fawad Alam, and gets bogged down when scoring rate is 6+. Has not won a single game when chasing (plus most of his performances have been against a weak Windies side)

what are you about? he has a track record of batting selfishly, which for a young batsman is quite impressive. check his centuries in Australia, check his batting in PSL, check his batting in West Indies, the guy is simply playing for himself right now

The guys got the highest SR out of all of our front line batsmen - if he's being selfish what does that say about the rest?

In Australia the guy was batting on 86 and he went to 100 in 5 balls with 3 boundaries and 2 singles - not particularly selfish. He ended up scoring 100 in 109 balls.

In West Indies - I've already acknowledged the innings where he & everyone in the team slowed down ridiculously as he was approaching is 100, however, as I mentioned in my original post, IMO that was a one off.

You don't need to be Chris Gayle to take time to settle in before playing your shots. You have to be a sensible batsman aka. anyone other than Afridi.

Strike rotation is a problem in the team - however - that is a problem right through our batting line up and you can see the team are trying to work on it, and being incapable of rotating the strike doesn't make you selfish.

I would argue that someone like Hafeez - who cannot rotate the strike and refuses to hit out in the fear of losing his wicket - is a lot more selfish, rather than someone like Babar or even Azhar Ali who also are not the best at rotating the strike, however, at least they try to smack a few quick runs.

You guys are getting fixated on the 'he played 6 dot balls' issue and deeming his selfish based on that - however, the fact is that 99% of batsmen need a few balls to get his eye in and for him to go out and start slogging from ball 1, would have been irresponsible and Afridi-like of him. Sure - it would have been good if he could have rotated the strike, however, being unable to do so doesn't make him selfish.

On top of that you add the fact that he got out after trying to hit back to back fours & it wasn't as if he nicked one behind whilst trying to defend - it sound very silly to call him selfish following yesterdays inning.

Inability to rotate strike and batting selfishly are two very different things and based on your posts it sounds like you are confusing the two - especially you KyoOne
 
The guys got the highest SR out of all of our front line batsmen - if he's being selfish what does that say about the rest?

In Australia the guy was batting on 86 and he went to 100 in 5 balls with 3 boundaries and 2 singles - not particularly selfish. He ended up scoring 100 in 109 balls.

In West Indies - I've already acknowledged the innings where he & everyone in the team slowed down ridiculously as he was approaching is 100, however, as I mentioned in my original post, IMO that was a one off.

You don't need to be Chris Gayle to take time to settle in before playing your shots. You have to be a sensible batsman aka. anyone other than Afridi.

Strike rotation is a problem in the team - however - that is a problem right through our batting line up and you can see the team are trying to work on it, and being incapable of rotating the strike doesn't make you selfish.

I would argue that someone like Hafeez - who cannot rotate the strike and refuses to hit out in the fear of losing his wicket - is a lot more selfish, rather than someone like Babar or even Azhar Ali who also are not the best at rotating the strike, however, at least they try to smack a few quick runs.

You guys are getting fixated on the 'he played 6 dot balls' issue and deeming his selfish based on that - however, the fact is that 99% of batsmen need a few balls to get his eye in and for him to go out and start slogging from ball 1, would have been irresponsible and Afridi-like of him. Sure - it would have been good if he could have rotated the strike, however, being unable to do so doesn't make him selfish.

On top of that you add the fact that he got out after trying to hit back to back fours & it wasn't as if he nicked one behind whilst trying to defend - it sound very silly to call him selfish following yesterdays inning.

Inability to rotate strike and batting selfishly are two very different things and based on your posts it sounds like you are confusing the two - especially you KyoOne

typical fan who wish to not see the realities
 
How can you even standout in this pathetic team? Forget about Amir or Babar, and just look at it from a closer perspective. The pressure a few of our players are under, knowing fully well they will be thrown under the bus due to the constant failures of others. Virat Kohli has an outstanding batting line-up around that motivates him to play at a better level. Same goes for Warner, Williamson (when Bmac was present), Root, Smith etc. You have to feed off others and stand out. What the heck will Babar do when he has to chase at 9 RPO and he has ZERO confidence in Azhar Ali to support him? What can Amir do when he delivers a few decent overs upfront, only for Wahab to come on and open the floodgates consistently? Put yourself in their shoes. You are asking a bowler and a batsman to standout in an eleven of useless players. And they haven't even established themselves as very good players yet, forget world class. Same goes for Malik. Must be longing for all this torture to be over so he can go back to playing in leagues where he has decent skilled players around him to feed on.

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Replace Starc for Amir and see Starc pick up wickets for Pakistan.
 
typical fan who wish to not see the realities

I think he is advocating the common sense approach of fixing the other 5 batsmen who are performing much worse than Babar first while you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
typical fan who wish to not see the realities

Typical response by a poster who's simply upset with the teams performance, so is simply looking to pin the blame on someone and does not actually have any facts or figures to back up his argument
 
I think he is advocating the common sense approach of fixing the other 5 batsmen who are performing much worse than Babar first while you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Absolutely.

Some fans are just upset with the teams performance - which I completely understand & I'm upset too - so they are looking to pin the blame on someone. However, to pin the blame on one of the very few players who is actually performing half decent in recent times is absolutely nonsensical
 
Again, let's compare to players who have played that many matches and not the players who have played hundreds.

New players have ups and downs. Sorry but he's not the next Kohli and maybe that's why people are on him so much.

27 matches, 50+ average and a 90 + SR. For some reason holistic fews are bogged down by recency bias.
 
What do you mean by he's being selfish? For me, selfish means that he only plays for himself. He's a good youngster we have, and it's about time to we stick with him during his rough patches. Youngster grows by learning from the experienced. Unfortunately, he doesn't have an experienced batting partners to learn from. So he will learn from failing.
 
Going good today. A bit slow, but played some beautiful shots.
 
again played 1 maiden over in a chase :facepalm: but I cannot complain much as his partner Mohammad Hafeez played 2 maiden overs :facepalm: :facepalm:
 
Gotta say pretty mediocre today. We were told he is our answer to India's Kohli. Well not a very good answer if you ask me.
 
He's doing fine. People can keep crying. The fact is that he is the best batsman in the country.
 
Pretty disappointing innings today - didn't seem to have much of plan
 
He's doing okay. Due to the professor he had to slow down his game, but since Hafeez's departure he's started to accelerate his innings but not by much
 
The ineptness of some people on here is unreal. Morkel was bowling a brilliant spell, and he played it perfectly. A few rash shots here and there but at least he's still out there. Kohli the other day also struggled to get going but he did not get out and look how the innings ended.
 
I dont know about selfishness but he is poor against spin anything coming in from 7th stump to 4th stump. Should consult some good batting coaches
 
Should go back to opening.

He can utilise the PP better than azhar or shehzad.

Micky was the KK coach and made him open, so he should do the same here.
 
He's doing fine. People can keep crying. The fact is that he is the best batsman in the country.

Criticism is important when it's due. It's because he's so talented that people don't want him molding himself in the current Pakistani style of batting.
 
Drive down the ground off Rabada and cut shot off Morkel were of the highest quality. Malik was so damn proud. The youngun just needs a bit of confidence. As soon as Malik joined him on the crease and hit a few boundaries, his body language changed and confidence skyrocketed.

Good to see him ride out a quality spell and ultimately take Pakistan home.
 
I am happy that he didn't give it away. Played slow but people need to realise that morkel was bowling an excellent spell as well. Plus he looked completely different when malik came in. He also looked good with sharjeel too in Australia.
 
Very bad innings today.

Was it really that bad it's not like we were chasing 300+

Why don't you want him to do well this innings was the type you see from guys that have played 100 + Odis
Most young Pakistani batsmen would have said its time to go as well at 42/2 but the determination was there to play a match winning innings in front of his idol AB Deviliars.
 
I think he is simply out of form.

The signs were there in WI series as well that he is out of form even though he scored a ton there.

I hope he gets his act together soon.
 
I just wish he didn't have to bat with cowards like Hafeez who normalize this kind of batting.
 
Drive down the ground off Rabada and cut shot off Morkel were of the highest quality. Malik was so damn proud. The youngun just needs a bit of confidence. As soon as Malik joined him on the crease and hit a few boundaries, his body language changed and confidence skyrocketed.

Good to see him ride out a quality spell and ultimately take Pakistan home.

Yeah, The up and over shot Malik played to off side helped Babar as he played exactly same shot of Morkel straight after.
 
For me it's his body language.

Once he's ready to bat he should be ready to battle cause Sometimes he just looks a little lazy and too relaxed and that can manfiest with some of his stroke play.

He also needs to add some muscle and get a bit more leaner.

The guy has talent but he needs to stay hungry so he keeps working hard to keep improving.
 
Too early to say I think. End result will tell if it was a match winning knock or selfish knock. Any team would a want a player from top 3 to make 100 at least SR 80 and made others to bat around him like what Azhar plays. And to remind Azhar not playing in this series. Sometimes when the top order scores quickly batsmen like hafeez come in at good score and waste balls for nothing as they would only be required to just rotate strike , it is a gem of an anchor that babar played if we look in this perspective. Moreover he is coming from a very poor test series which his team lost completely. I will wait till the match finished to decide whether his 100 helped his team to win or lose (soft runs)
 
In a 50 over game u need a solid consolidator so others can play their game around a set batsman. Take his century away we are left with 192. Babar isnt an afridi who is going to score 20-30 ball 50s or hit consecutive 4s and 6s. Fakhar played his natural game and babar supported him. Then hafeez and malik played well around him. He had to stick around and hold 1 end otherwise we wud neva wud hav posted even 220 without him. He had dreadful test innings and he scored a century in the 1st odi. Giv him credit!
 
Very poor criticism.These kind of fans deserve only hacks like afridi.If a young man is under pressure and facing the axe it will affect his game and he will play a bit paranoid.Still excellent performance.But ofc pak fans don't like consolidators.Only boom boom.
 
Well the way SL batted it shows that wicket wasnt easy. Moreover Babar had a nightmare test series so it was expected that he will take time to get into any rhythm. It was a very good knock given his output so far on this tour and I am sure now with his confidence restored we will see him much more positive in the upcoming matches.
 
96 off 102 balls so far in 4th ODI vs England.... very sad!
 
Pathetic innings today. His innings is the reason we will lose. Very selfish on approach to his century
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">10 overs of no boundaries for Babar Azam in his innings:<br><br>37.4 overs - a four to bring up his 100<br>Previous four was at 27.5 overs<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ENGvPAK?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ENGvPAK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cricket?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Cricket</a></p>— Saj Sadiq (@Saj_PakPassion) <a href="https://twitter.com/Saj_PakPassion/status/1129398847921426432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
People are really harsh on this kid ,he is still new and learning his trade he will only get better from here and will become better than Viv Richards : Blind fan-boys
 
Shameless and selfish individual, should never have played for Pakistan who prefers his own 100 over team total. Compromises the team, PCB should be bashed for promoting such an individual
 
Shameless and selfish individual, should never have played for Pakistan who prefers his own 100 over team total. Compromises the team, PCB should be bashed for promoting such an individual

blasphemer.
Babar is a most unselfish player in Pakistan side
 
Shameless and selfish individual, should never have played for Pakistan who prefers his own 100 over team total. Compromises the team, PCB should be bashed for promoting such an individual

Bring his replacement first.
 
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