Former cricketers have expressed disappointment over Pakistan\u2019s embarrassing exit from the ICC World Cup, insisting that a lot needs to be done for improvement. However, they emphasise that skipper Babar Azam should not be solely blamed for the loss. A 93-run loss to England sealed Pakistan\u2019s fate in Kolkata on Saturday, ending the 1992 champions\u2019 already slim hopes of reaching the semis. Former Pakistan captain Ramiz Raja reckoned Babar was \u201cdepressed\u201d over the reaction at home. Babar\u2019s captaincy in India was also questioned, with accusations of lacking aggression. \u201cThere\u2019s so much pressure on him [Babar] that he may leave the job,\u201d Ramiz told the BBC\u2019s Test Match Special. \u201cBack home there has obviously been a massive backlash, as expected. The Pakistan media have targeted certain players, and especially Babar. \u201cIt\u2019s just a World Cup so you have to take the heat somehow. The problem with this team is it has the potential to play modern-day cricket but they have been a bit shy and timid with their approach. \u201c Ramiz criticised the overall system for the team\u2019s performance. \u201cWhen your bowlers don\u2019t take wickets with the new ball and start getting expensive, how would Babar do captaincy then?\u201d Former skipper Wasim Akram emphasised that blaming the captain alone was unfair, attributing the struggles to systemic faults. \u201cThe captain alone is not playing the game. Yes, he did make captaincy errors in this World Cup and in the Asia Cup as well. But he isn\u2019t alone to blame. This is a fault of the entire system for the last one year or more where the players don\u2019t know who is the coach. You cannot make him scapegoat,\u201d Wasim said. Other Pakistan cricketers, such as Shoaib Malik and Shoaib Akhtar, expressed disappointment. Malik criticised the lack of resources and street-smartness from the captain, while Shoaib highlighted the lack of intent. \u201cLack of resources. No street smartness from the captain. We have only won against small teams,\u201d Malik said. Shoaib wrote in his social media post, \u201cEnd of a disappointing campaign for Pakistan. They never got going really at any point. Clear lack of intent was visible. A lot needs to be done, but even for that, intent is important first.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former cricketers have expressed disappointment over Pakistan\u2019s embarrassing exit from the ICC World Cup, insisting that a lot needs to be done for improvement. However,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11453,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}