'Ask him who's a star' - Babar Azam on Shoaib Akhtar's 'lack of stars in Pakistan' remark

After Ramiz Raja, former Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has come hard down at the team for displaying a poor brand of cricket against England in the three-match ODI series. The visitors were comprehensively beaten in all the three departments of the game and could not even give a tough fight to a second-string England team.

Apparently, Akhtar told that the Pakistan team lacks star players and that’s the reason they have performed poorly during the three ODI matches. While Babar Azam managed to score a classy 158, Pakistan still could not beat England and suffered a 3-0 whitewash.

When Pakistan skipper Azam was quizzed to speak on Akhtar’s ‘Star’ comments, the 26-year-old answered the question by supporting his teammates and felt all the team members are giving 100%.

“I think he [Shoaib Akhtar] doesn’t think so, but all the players are giving their 100 percent everywhere. I think you should ask him who a star is and who isn’t. I can’t argue or give comments on this,” Azam was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan.

Babar Azam reckons bowlers and fielders failed to pull up their socks

While Pakistan batters led by Azam and Mohammad Rizwan managed to score 331, it was their bowlers and fielders who failed to support their batters. There were few misfields and a few dropped chances that contributed to Pakistan not putting up a collective team performance.

If in one game bowling clicked, then in another it didn’t. This hampered the Men in Green to win a single game in the ODI series.

“If we talk about the batting, the ball was coming on with a bit of double pace early on. We were trying to get a partnership going. The longer we took it, the better for us because we could have recovered towards the end. I had a partnership with Imam and then another good one with Mohammad Rizwan. I think the score was enough. We could have scored more but lost some back-to-back wickets.”

Azam concluded by saying that the bowlers’ inconsistency cost us a potential win in the third ODI. “In the first two matches, our batting let us down. We lost early wickets in the first ten overs. We didn’t have momentum because of that. I have said it before as well that we lost the match today because of bowling and fielding.”