World Cup 2023: Like every Pakan captain since 1992, Babar Azam needs to fill Imran-sized boots | Cricket-world-cup News

For much of the sixty minutes that Pakan spent on the ground before moving to the nets behind the arena, Babar Azam meandered from one spot to the other, surveying his scattered troops like a caring but not an anxious general. He checked into the ring of footballers, where he cheekily nutmegged Mohammad Rizwan before swiping the air, attempting an audacious overhead kick.He joined the pacers, stretching their sinews on the furnace-hot grass and himself contorted his body like a gymnast. He turned his gaze towards the centre pitch, had a quick peep at the surface roasting in the heat, before he flung half-a-dozen flat throws at a yellow plastic stump, where Mohammad Nawaz and Shadab Khan were target-practising.
Then, as though a siren went inside him, he called for a huddle. He addressed the gathering, but in as placid a manner as he would bat. He bats softly; he speaks softly too. His gravelly voice hit low-frequency notes, he did not resort to theatrical hurrahs or battlecries. But whatever he was telling them, his men patiently lened, nodding their heads.

🗓️ #OnThisDay in 2016, @babarazam258 became the third 🇵🇰 batter to score three successive ODI 💯s 👏
He later became the first batter to record 3️⃣ consecutive centuries in ODIs on two separate occasions. Relive Babar’s tons against the West Indies in the UAE 7️⃣ years ago 🎥 pic.twitter.com/nYvNxuW8vs
— Pakan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) October 5, 2023
In a sense, Babar the captain is a reflection of Babar the batsman, no excesses, no wild energy, flowing calmly like a brook. Celebrations are understated affairs; heartbreaks are mellow moments. Babar; in this vein, is more Kane Williamson than Virat Kohli, the two leaders he said he admires.
On the field, he rarely fumes at his fielders; in moments of despair, he turns his head back and takes a deep long breath, exhaling all his rage. In moments of joy, his eyes twinkle, a smile spreads rather than explodes. He does not impose himself on the bowlers when setting fields; he does not seem to serenade them with ideas. He lets them be. He ress the raw emotions boiling inside him, even his eyes offer little window to his mind and mood. Not that he is colourless or cold. But he is wired this way, minimalic and modest. It does not imply that he is a defensive captain, but he has wrapped his attacking streaks in a cloak of calm.

Ready for our opening fixture of #CWC23 on Friday 🗓️
Read more ➡️ https://t.co/7DglBl9zez#DattKePakani | #WeHaveWeWill pic.twitter.com/UioDskFqje
— Pakan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) October 5, 2023
Often his simple ways have been misinterpreted as a lack of fire. His ODI captaincy—still just 34-games-old—still a study in progress. But in that time, he has copped the odd criticism for supposedly “textbook tactics” according to former England captain Nasser Hussain, Shoaib Akhtar wants him to be sharper, and more proactive in sensing the game’s drift. A case in point is how he let India recover from 66 for 4 to 266 in Pallekele.
Glue binding the team
But a more precise gauge of his influence could be spotted in the togetherness of the team, an end several Pakan captains of the past have failed to materialize. Mickey Arthur, the team director, dwelled on it. “It’s a close-knit group. You can always see them chatting in the corridor or doing something together. Most of them have grown up together, have been familiar with each other from their early days.” Arthur has been a pillar of support for Babar and is firm that the “new philosophy of playing cricket the ‘The Pakani Way’ revolves around Babar.”
The World Cup thus would be an acid test for Babar’s dual roles—his influence with the bat in big games on the biggest stage, as well as the real scope and depth of his leadership skills, whether the inexorable pressure of either role affect each other, or inspire each other, a complex yet fascinating narrative. Being Pakan’s best batsman is often a burden enough; being a captain triples the pressure. But Pakan need both; Babar the batsman and Babar the captain. His batting to click high gears and captaincy to strum the right tunes.

.@babarazam258‘s Pakan eyes hory in India as they kick off their World Cup journey tomorrow 🏆
Read more ➡️ https://t.co/7DglBl9zez#CWC23 | #DattKePakani | #WeHaveWeWill pic.twitter.com/NewL6zs7kh
— Pakan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) October 5, 2023
Succeeding in both is difficult, but that is the plight of captains, captains especially from the cricket-frenzied South Asia. If every successor of his was measured in the light of MS Dhoni in India, in Pakan it is even stringent a yardstick.
To be judged the immense personality of its greatest leader of (cricketing) men, Imran Khan, is a brutal burden thrust on every successor of his. It’s a 1000-ton millstone wrapped on their neck, the weight creaking their veins and crushing their spirits. Not that Pakan were not blessed with leaders; there were those such as Wasim Akram who boasted a win percentage of 60.55 in 109 50-over matches managing an allegedly rift-ridden team of schemers and betrayers. His numbers are more glittering than Imran himself, who won only 53.95 percentage of the games he captained. But Akram is no Imran in eyes of his countrymen, for Imran provided them the ultimate joy, ending their long and anguished pursuit of winning the World Cup. There were the understated leaders like Waqar Younis and Misbah-ul-Haq; Safaraz Ahmed shepherded his team to the only other global ODI title they had won, the Champions Trophy in 2017; Younis Khan guided them to their only T20 title.

But none of them are considered equal in stature to Imran. Perhaps none will ever be. For, Imran alone casts a bewitchingly suffocating shadow over his successors, like an ineffable, invisible ghost.
So much so that the only pursuit of every Pakan captain since him has been to find an inner Imran in him, bending and moulding oneself into an Imran, even if it be a counterfeit one. Such trappings of hory have only strangled a nation from achieving its full potential. Akram’s batches of 1996 and 1999 were far superior in personnel than Imran’s cornered tigers.Most Read
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Babar was born two years after the epochal night in Melbourne. But the romance of the night might have been passed onto him his elders, with brushes of exaggeration. The final is part-magic, part-myth, much like Pakan cricket itself.

So Babar too could feel the frame of Imran flickering at a dance, lurking in the corner of his eye, his baritone echoing from the skies. Babar is no stranger to pressure. He has eloquently lived up to the billing as his county’s best batsmen, producing knocks that blend steel and silk under extreme pressure; he has led Pakan in T20 World Cups; he had his captaincy mettle doubted and dissected, he has tasted galling defeats at home and tasted success abroad. He would win more games for his country with the bat, even tournaments, and end up as perhaps the best batsman his country has produced. But he would eventually be judged how good a captain he was, and whether he lifted the World Cup.
The burden on Babar’s shoulders thus has multiple layers—he not only has to define the tournament with his batting and leadership, but also define the hory of his country’s cricket too.