Pakistan cricket is going through tough times at the moment with their recent Test series loss at the hands of Bangladesh at home. The team also got knocked out of the T20 World Cup in the league stage with a loss to the USA. Prior to that, the team had also finished at fifth place with only four wins in the ODI World Cup 2023 and failed to qualify for the semi-final.
Babar Azam was the captain in the ODI World Cup and resigned after the debacle in India. However, only after one series, he was reinstated as the skipper of the Pakistan team for the mega event in the shortest format while Shan Masood had taken over as the Test captain by then. But the results haven't changed at all as Pakistan have lost all five Tests under Masood and Babar's captaincy is once again under threat.
Following consistently poor results across formats, there have been calls for Pakistan to change both their captains. But is PCB really thinking of changing their skippers? Well, if the PCB source is to be believed, the Chairman of the board, Mohsin Naqvi has left the decision up to the two coaches of the national team and the selectors.
Pakistan's white-ball coach Gary Kirsten and Test coach Jason Gillespie are not in favour of changing the captains hastily and are in favour of giving a proper run to both Masood and Babar. "There has been no discussion on changing the captains as the PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi has left it up to the two coaches and selectors to decide on the captaincy.
"And Kirsten and Gillespie are very clear that Shan and Babar both need to be given a proper run before judging their leadership abilities," the source added. Notably, Pakistan have not played a single ODI since the World Cup last year. So, there is no idea around who will be their skipper in the format with the team scheduled to play 8-9 ODIs before the Champions Trophy next year.
With Babar unlikely to be removed as T20I captain, there is every possibility of him getting the ODI captaincy as well as Pakistan might not want multiple captains two white-ball formats.