By Staff Reporter
LAHORE: Babar Azam has revealed he was given no warning of the extraordinary shake-up that saw his head coach sacked and seven players sent home mid-series, telling reporters in Birmingham that the sweeping changes were “news to me” as well.
The Pakistan captain’s admission, delivered at a subdued pre-match press conference on Tuesday, exposed the scale of the turmoil engulfing his side ahead of Wednesday’s series-deciding third Test against England at Edgbaston. Pakistan arrive at the ground already beaten, 2-0 down after being outplayed at Headingley and thrashed by 194 runs at Lord’s, results that have left their tour in ruins and prompted the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to intervene in dramatic fashion.
In the aftermath of the Lord’s defeat, the PCB dismissed Sarfraz Ahmed as head coach and Umar Gul as bowling coach, replacing them with white-ball head coach Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke respectively. Seven players — among them the experienced trio of Imam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Rizwan and Salman Ali Agha — were dropped from the touring party altogether. Five of the replacements summoned to England have never played Test cricket.
Asked to explain a reshuffle engineered entirely by the board’s selection panel, Babar was careful not to be drawn into open criticism, but made clear he had been left out of the process.
“It was news to me as well,” he said. “I only found out about these things later.”
Pressed further, the 31-year-old repeatedly deferred to the board, declining to offer his own assessment of decisions that have effectively rebuilt Pakistan’s Test side overnight.
“The PCB made the decisions, so I think they would be better placed to explain them,” he said. “Whatever decision the PCB has taken, as a player and as captain, I have to go along with the decision made by the cricket board. The PCB would have made its decision after giving it considerable thought. In my opinion, it would be better to ask them about it because they would be able to explain it much better.”
The upheaval has been accompanied by fresh scrutiny of the squad’s off-field conduct. Aaqib Javed, the PCB’s high-performance director and a member of the selection panel, has said the coaching sackings followed frustration at the staff’s handling of selection matters before the second Test. Separately, the board confirmed on Monday that it had opened an inquiry into the “discipline and conduct” of members of the squad while on tour. Babar said he knew nothing about it.
“No, I don’t know,” he said. “I have no idea about it.”
Despite retaining the captaincy, Babar now leads a Test team missing more than half the experience it began the tour with, and one that has failed to pass 200 in any of its four innings against an England attack rejuvenated by the pace of Jofra Archer, Ollie Robinson, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson. It is almost four years since Babar last scored a Test century.
Rather than dwell on the disruption, the captain sought to frame it as a chance for Pakistan’s newcomers to make their mark. Uncapped pace bowler Razaullah and all-rounder Arafat Minhas are both in contention to win their first Test caps at Edgbaston, while Saim Ayub, who already has eight Tests behind him, is expected to return to the side.
“The new players are coming in, and they have a golden opportunity to grab it and play this game,” Babar said, adding that a dead rubber, with the series already lost, might paradoxically ease the pressure on his patched-together team. “For us, this is an opportunity as a team and as a group. The series is lost, but we have nothing to lose. So we can play freely, go out onto the ground and believe in ourselves as a team.”
He said the squad had used the past two days to bond before the biggest selection reshuffle of his captaincy tenure. “We have had a couple of days of practice and have spoken to each other a lot. Whenever a new team or a youngster comes in, there is a little excitement, and that excitement is visible.”
Babar urged his younger players to treat adversity as motivation rather than a burden. “Any young player who comes in is excited, and that excitement is visible. I believe that will be visible in the match, too,” he said. “I firmly believe you need to grab opportunities and perform in difficult conditions. That’s why we play cricket, because we have to perform and dominate in difficult conditions. We need to forget about past failures and shift focus to the future.”
Root rejects “disrespectful” suggestion that Pakistan have shown no fight
While Pakistan wrestle with the fallout of their selection crisis, England captain Joe Root used his own press conference at Edgbaston to push back firmly against suggestions that his side’s dominance reflects a lack of resistance from their opponents.
Root, leading England for the first time since Ben Stokes’s shock retirement from international cricket, was asked directly whether Pakistan had shown “no fight” during the series. He rejected the framing outright.
“I think that’s a bit disrespectful to both Pakistan as a team and to us as a team,” Root said. “Absolutely we have found them a challenge. I don’t think we’ve allowed them to get into games because of how well we’ve played as well and how quickly we’ve read the situations and the surfaces that we’ve had.”
England’s bowling attack — now featuring Archer, Robinson, Tongue and Atkinson — has been irresistible, sealing an innings-and-103-run victory at Headingley before completing a 194-run win at Lord’s to clinch the series with a match to spare. Root argued that the scale of those margins should not be read as evidence of a one-sided contest in terms of effort or application.
“I think it’s very easy to say one team is excellent and one team is poor. Normally it’s somewhere in the middle,” he said. “If one team has been outstanding then the other team can’t have been poor and vice versa. I think it’s important to live in that middle area somewhere and understand that that’s not how it is.”
With the series already won, Root insisted England would not relax at Edgbaston against a Pakistan side now missing several senior players and blooding five uncapped newcomers.
“Regardless of what’s happened over the last two games, this week it’s a completely different proposition for us,” he said. “There’s a very talented group of players in that dressing room and you’ve got to be ready for it, so we’ll make sure that we are.”
The third Test begins on Wednesday, with Pakistan already labelled by some observers as one of the weakest touring sides to visit England in decades — a reputation their captain now hopes an unfamiliar, youthful line-up can begin to repair.
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