Babar Azam to be sacked, Mohammad Rizwan set to become all-format Pakistan captain

The days of Babar Azam as the white-ball captain of the Pakistan National Cricket Team are numbered as he is all set to be sacked from the role for the second time in his career.

Babar Azam was earlier sacked from captaincy after Pakistan's ODI World Cup 2023 debacle. However, a regime change in the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), which saw the arrival of Mohsin Naqvi as the chairman, led to Babar getting back the white-ball captaincy.

Since resuming his leadership in the white-ball cricket, Babar Azam has continued to fail both with bat as well as skipper. Under him, Pakistan faced a league-stage exit from the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 and even lost a match against the United States of America.

According to Geo News, Babar Azam not being appointed as one of the captains in Pakistan's Champions One-Day Cup tournament was a hint that he would soon be sacked as skipper of the national team.

On Friday, PCB revealed the captains and provisional squads for the competition, and Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Haris, and Saud Shakeel were picked as the captains of the five teams.

Pakistan's next assignment in white-ball cricket is in November when they travel to Australia for a three-match ODI series and a three-match T20I series. Ahead of the Australia tour, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will sack Babar Azam and name a new captain.

Mohammad Rizwan Set To Replace Babar Azam

The front-runner to replace Babar Azam as the white-ball captain is the star wicketkeeper-batsman Mohammad Rizwan. As per the same report, he will initially take charge of the white-ball team only before eventually taking over the red-ball leadership from Shan Masood.

Also, the discussions around the change in leadership have been going on in Pakistan for a while. The white-ball head coach, Gary Kirsten, had already spoken to the board officials as well as Babar Azam in this regard in July.

Meanwhile, a different report in Cricket Pakistan has claimed that Shan Masood has left the PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi very disappointed and he will lose his red-ball captaincy to Mohammad Rizwan very soon.

Notably, Masood is yet to win any matches since being appointed as the full-time Test captain of the side. Under his leadership, Pakistan faced an embarrassing 360-run defeat against Pat Cummins & Co. in the series opener in Perth before losing the next two matches by 79 runs and 8 wickets in Melbourne and Sydney.

Then, Pakistan faced a shock 10-wicket defeat in the first Test and a 6-wicket loss in the second Test against Bangladesh to face a whitewash at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium. Even though the Test team head coach Jason Gillespie has openly backed Masood to continue, the PCB officials are not on the same page with the coach.

Pakistan's next assignment is a three-match home Test series against the England National Cricket Team, and there is a different controversy surrounding that series, with PCB still unsure of the venues for the matches with construction work underway at the stadiums.