Why has Azhar Ali been dropped from the ODI team?

[mkyawar]

Do you think it is time to bring back Azhar Ali. Keeping in mind the world cup is in England and he played really well in the champions trophy. We dropped him because he failed in one match against NZ but the whole team failed as well. I think Fakhar and Azhar with the back up opener Imam should be taken to world cup. Hafeez is a sitting duck and his bowling is not that effective now

 

[Deewana Mastana]

Poor form?

 

[RedwoodOriginal]

The simple answer is nepotism. The longer, more detailed answer is nepotism.

 

[mak36]

Game has moved on. So does Pakistan.

 

[Arham_PakFan]

Because of poor performances in his last series(vs NZ).

He did well in the Champions Trophy but overall he's not a good player for One-Dayers.

I expect him to be back for the 2019 WC though.

 

[hussain.r97]

Still a far better option than Imam ul Haq....

 

[Usman Chadda]

Awful performance in NZ ODI series. Looked well out of depth

 

[dauntless]

Rightly dropped. imam is not any better though. I would take hafeez over these mediocre players everyday and twice on sunday

 

[InziRules]

Still a far better option than Imam ul Haq....

Yes, I'm missing Azhar and his 100 balls 60's

 

[hussain.r97]

Yes, I'm missing Azhar and his 100 balls 60's

Neither Imam or Azhar should be in the team right now, but I would take Azhar over Imam anyday. Imam's century today was a low quality innings.

 

[InziRules]

Neither Imam or Azhar should be in the team right now, but I would take Azhar over Imam anyday. Imam's century today was a low quality innings.

Show me one Azhar century played at a 90% strike rate.

 

[hussain.r97]

Show me one Azhar century played at a 90% strike rate.

You're welcome

Now find me an innings Azhar has played with as many dot balls as Imam played. Also find me an innings where Azhar's strikerate was below 40 for the first 30-40 runs of his innings.

 

[InziRules]

3 in 53. While Imam has 2 in 5.

 

[wazzy]

Strike rate of 74 over 53 games in modern ODI cricket is just not acceptable. This sort of batting will not win you many games. Instead of looking back we should look forward and experiment with newer style batters like Sabzada Farahan etc.

 

[idrizzy]

Not surprised by his exclusion, more surprised that the coaching staff pulled the trigger this quickly though.

Good for others more suited to ODI than Azhar. Not a modern day batsmen and we do have the quality to replace him.

 

[Fahdi]

Because he plays an outdated brand of cricket. Also he is 33 (34?) so potential for improvement simply isn't there.

 

[Syed1]

We dropped Azhar, but replaced him with his inferior version.

 

[coy0607]

Because he's an awful ODI batsmen and should have never been selected to begin with. Someone finally realized that and hence he was dropped

Imam isn't necessarily a better ODI batsmen, but at least he has age on his side

 

[happydavy]

Either Azhar or kamral Akmal should be in the wc squad, because it's a long tournament and I think baring India, every other team will change their opening combination more than once in the tournament bcoz of dip in forms or while playing against certain oppositions or on certain pitches.

 

[hadi123]

Because he's not aggressive enough but Imam-ul-Haq isn't the right replacement either.

 

[Savak]

Waqar Younis and Misbah ul Haq should have been held to account for recommending Azhar Ali for the ODI leadership when he was never selected in the ODI squad consistently before that. It is ludicrous that these 2 got away with what they did to Pakistan Cricket.

 

[The_Odd_One]

Out of Azhar, Shehzad, and Imam, I would prefer Imam because at least he is young and has time on his side to improve his game.

 

[Baigel]

People were ready to kill to have Azhar out of the team and now questioning the decision.Hypocricy.

 

[TeymurBlake]

Azhar isn't the opener Pakistan need. They need someone more dynamic and aggressive which Imam isn't either.

 

[BaankeJi]

Azhar Ali is too slow. Not suited to modern cricket. Why not try Kamran Akmal who has been performing really well in domestic circuit?

 

[Shaka81]

Azhar Ali is not suited to limited overs cricket and the way Pakistan cricket is set up he will lose his test place as well as his ODI place if he tries to persist with chasing a place in the ODI team. It's happened to lots of players in the past when they were played in the wrong format, struggled and then lost their place in the format they exceeded in.

 

[ExplicitAI]

His batting isn't suited to ODI's since his SR isn't that good. We're not asking for a guy who has to score 30 ball 100s but someone who has a SR of 90+ to partner Fakhar as that would do us nicely. One thing to note is that when a team wins a tournament they usually don't keep the same players on to the next world cup as that would result in a disaster. India won the WC in 2011 and got rid of Sehwag, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Yuvraj etc. They replaced these lot with Dhawan, Rohit, Bhuvneshwar, Pandya, etc, and have managed to compete well in future tournaments. I personally think we're going to have to hope for someone to shine in the next PSL and hope it's an opening batsman.

 

[Hasan123]

Because he isn't an ODI player. Allowing him to concentrate on tests will help to get his form back.

 

[goran]

Because he is not suited to the modern LOI game and should never be selected again.

 

[Slim]

Because he is a horrible LOI player and should only be limited to test cricket where he failed in his last series.

 

[Nasty Naz]

He is a pretty bad LOI overs so that would probably be the reason why he has been dropped and hopefully stays dropped.

 

[waleed88]

Waqar Younis and Misbah ul Haq should have been held to account for recommending Azhar Ali for the ODI leadership when he was never selected in the ODI squad consistently before that. It is ludicrous that these 2 got away with what they did to Pakistan Cricket.

Well Misbah wanted him in the ODI lineup for the world cup, he was overruled by Moin Khan. You had characters like Shehzad, Maqsood, Umar Akmal, Nasir Jamshed, Younis Khan, Wahab Riaz in the lineup...

So maybe select a captain from that?

Sarfraz was the only obvious choice besides Azhar, its clear he had a big bias against him being captain.. they wanted someone who could speak English, look more educated etc etc

 

[ManFan]

Well Misbah wanted him in the ODI lineup for the world cup, he was overruled by Moin Khan. You had characters like Shehzad, Maqsood, Umar Akmal, Nasir Jamshed, Younis Khan, Wahab Riaz in the lineup...

So maybe select a captain from that?

Sarfraz was the only obvious choice besides Azhar, its clear he had a big bias against him being captain.. they wanted someone who could speak English, look more educated etc etc

Sherry Bapu and Pandit Misbah wanted an Acha Bacha which led to 3/4 ODI losses to BD.

It was THE lowest point in Pakistan’s cricketing history in terms of series results.

 

[waleed88]

Sherry Bapu and Pandit Misbah wanted an Acha Bacha which led to 3/4 ODI losses to BD.

It was THE lowest point in Pakistan’s cricketing history in terms of series results.

The teams we played weren't world beaters either, that whole era was one huge cry for help.... it all changed after the PSL and not just a change in captaincy personnel.

 

[TeamPak95]

Modern day ODI batting requirements is too much for Azhar Ali + he just looks so ugly when he bats, especially when he forces shots to go to the boundary. His CT17 performances is probably the most absolute best you could get out of him.

 

[introvert]

Because he is not good enough for modern day cricket. Specially as a opener player must have free flowing stroke play and attacking instinct which unfortunately azhar bhai lacks big time.

 

[Minnowbasher]

I'd rather imam because he is young and can improve. He's better than azhar imo.

 

[Plumb]

That's the decision I don't even need an explanation

 

[Sirris]

You can't have an argument about Azahr's place in the ODI team without first explaining why he was selected for the ODI team out of blue and made the captain to top it off.

So if you are going to argue that Azhar didn't deserve to be drop on merit you'd first have to acknowledge that his come back into the ODI team was not on merit either.

For some Azhar might have shown great fighting skill and temperament during his stay in the ODI team but it was obvious that the guy was out of his place trying to sell himself as a modern day ODI. He was overwhelmed by the demands and was just looking to survive and play it out.

It is much better to invest in younger alternatives who might struggle at first but at least have the potential to fulfill the demands of modern day ODI. Instead of just being on the pitch to fight it out they can actually take the fight to the opposition and put them under pressure.

Like Fakhar.

 

[zn426]

Azhar's only highlight as captain was leading the team to a 3-2 win in Sri Lanka in a win or stay home series to qualify for the champions trophy. Fortunate that he did win it or we would never have been able to celebrate last year.

 

[Greenstorm]

His fielding at slips alone is a good enough reason to drop him.

 

[Ami]

Wrong move...unless he pushes his strike rate upto 100 or more and learns how to rotate?

 

[Amjid Javed]

His game isnt suited to LOI cricket and he should have never been in team in 1st place, yes hes been replaced by a nepotism pick but regardless of that poor fact, he himself deserved to be dropped.

 

[super hitter]

Why do people forget the actual performances in a match and back things up with stats. Looking at 'Overall Stats' is by far the worst thing ever to judge a player's skill or form.

 

[Nasty Naz]

Why do people forget the actual performances in a match and back things up with stats. Looking at 'Overall Stats' is by far the worst thing ever to judge a player's skill or form.

Yep, using a large sample size of a player's data is indefinitely worse than using a smaller sample size in which a player may have better performed than his actual talent.

What an absurd notion. I don't understand people's love affair with mediocre LOI batsmen who can't even bat at an 80 SR when 300 is the norm nowadays. Azhar's career SR is 74.45 which is scoring at a 233 pace per 300 balls. That is ridiculously low. Even his career average is misleading where Azhar has mostly done well against Bangladesh/Sri Lanka/Zimbabwe and only has SR above 80 vs 3 teams (Bangladesh/WI/Zimbabwe). He lacks a range of shots, lacks ability to hit sixes or increase the pace of his innings and frankly he doesn't even occupy the crease as long as you'd think. Career average is only 36.90 and he only has hundreds vs Bangladesh/WI/Zimbabwe. He is also 33 years old which is generally past the age of an athlete's peak performance and one cannot reasonably expect him to perform any better.

He is what he is, which is frankly a very mediocre LOI batsmen and certainly not suited to the modern ODI game. He is better than Shehzad I guess? Though that's not exactly worth of praise.

Pakistan batting is finally starting to move into the modern era so lets avoid having players that bat like its 1980's/1990's and aren't able to comprise a score higher than 225-250.

 

[Justcrazy]

Question should have been , how he managed to play so many OD for Pakistan ?

 

[Ilan Bluestone]

Nepotism is what had him selected as captain when he wasn't in the squad at all.

The game is modern, the coach is selecting those who have adapted to it, and unfortunately/or fortunately, Azhar has not.

Too often the fans have an affinity to players, when the reality is and should always be that loyalty should be to winning.

 

[Ab Fan]

Azhar has an avg of 36 at a SR of 74. That's outright poor.

Kane Williamson is considered an above average ODI batsmen at a SR of 83 today. So, 74 is very poor.

A 45 avg and a SR of 85 should be the benchmark in today's era IMO ignoring some rare cases like Jos Buttler(who has SR of 118) just like we ignored Jayasuriya's case in 90s because he had a SR of 90+.

 

[idrizzy]

Surprised no one has mentioned Sharjeel as an opener when talking about openers. Usually there’s his name thrown in the mix too