"Being
Babar Azam
is not an easy task."
Salman Butt
's words depict the tough time that the
Pakistan
captain has been facing lately, especially since the ODI World Cup disaster last year, leading up to the team's sorry early exit from the ongoing
T20 World Cup
. Additionally, Butt chose to relate that to
Virat Kohli
's lean patch at the tournament, calling the Indian batting icon's performance "much worse" compared to Babar's.
Pakistan exited the T20 World Cup in the group-stage itself, after an upset defeat against co-hosts USA and a narrow loss to archrivals India, who are undefeated going into their semifinal against defending champions England on Thursday.
Former Pakistan players have blamed the fiasco on Babar's captaincy and his failure to keep the team united, which has led to alleged groupism within the squad. Babar's average show with the bat, especially his poor strike rate according to T20 standards, has added to his criticism.
In his four innings at the T20 World Cup, Babar scored 122 runs at a strike rate of 101.66, with 44 being his top score. In comparison Kohli's numbers in the tournament are much inferior. In six innings, Kohli has only aggregated 66 runs at a strike rate of 100.00 and a top score of 37.
"Kohli never gets the same criticism as Babar, even though his performances are much worse. Why? Because he is Indian luckily, he is not playing from nation like Pakistan," Butt wrote in a post on microbloging social media platform 'X'.
"Being Babar is not an easy task," he added.
Kohli's strike rate and batting form in T20s was heavily questioned at the start of the Indian Premier League, which happened just before the T20 World Cup. However, the former India captain and Royal Challengers Bengaluru opener answered his critics in style, accumulating 741 runs to win the Orange Cap as the highest run-scorer.
But Kohli is yet to show that form in the T20 World Cup, and India will hope that he turns up with a big knock in the two most crucial matches that matter -- semifinal and the final. However, Butt's words are sure to rile up some of the Indian fans.
English (US) ·