To learn the art of captaincy, one needs to captain a First Class and List A side to gain experience from the longer format cricket. But, it seems that for PCB, U19 and T20 cricket, is a good enough captaincy criteria for the international job.
If there was a lesson that was supposed to be learned from “Project: Captain Babar Azam”, it is that you need to have domestic cricket captaincy experience before you are handed over the captaincy of the national team.
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Pre-2019 Captaincy Criteria
The captaincy criteria before 2019 were something much more different, as the player’s captaincy experience at domestic cricket was considered first before deciding on whether to appoint the national team’s captain.
Misbah handling the captaincy of Faisalabad Region, Faisalabad Wolves, Sargodha District, SNGPL and Pakistan A was one of the main factors that allowed him to get the top job at the international level. His performance as captain was quite good and reflected what he had learned from his captaincy experience from Pakistan A and domestic first-class teams.
Similarly, Sarfraz’s leadership developed with the Karachi teams and Sindh teams of the domestic circuit, which later resulted in Sarfraz winning the ICC 2017 Champions Trophy
Limited overs captain, Shaheen Shah Afridi
The decision to make Shaheen Afridi the captain for the limited-overs side has been made based on Shaheen’s captaincy result with Lahore Qalanders. Having won the Qalanders PSL 2022 and 2023, he has emerged as the fan favourite and his PR image from the wins has also improved by quite a bit.
However, like Babar, Shaheen also has no captaincy experience in first-class cricket or List-A cricket. The two longer formats of the game are what help teach captains how to read conditions and use resources accordingly, something which Babar failed due to his lack of experience. The captaincy criteria again like Babar’s time is based upon the player’s image, rather than his leadership experience.
While an argument could be made that domestic T20 captaincy is good enough for international T20 captaincy, it does not teach a captain how to utilize resources or come up with a contingency plan if the game does not go accordingly.
The ignoring of Rizwan
Interestingly, Rizwan was ignored for the captaincy role for either of the formats. Had the captaincy criteria been captaincy performance, then Rizwan would have most likely fulfilled that criteria as he has captained Peshawar Region, SNGPL and KPK in Pakistan’s domestic circuit.
Yet he has been ignored. It seems that the Saya-Yazoo controversy has left a very bad impression of Rizwan that PCB considered more when deciding on the new captain of the Pakistan cricket team.
Whatever decision has been made, only time will tell whether it blows up like Babar’s captaincy or not.
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