Pakistan coach Jason Gillespie has backed Babar Azam to find form and return to his best across all formats of the game, saying ‘great players’ always find ways to overcome lean patches. Gillespie said Babar will continue to play a key role for Pakistan cricket in the near future.
Babar Azam was dropped from the Test team along with Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah for the second and third Tests of the three-match series against England. The decision led to divided opinions in Pakistan cricket as the former captain, a superstar cricketer, was dropped from the side in the middle of a major home series.
Azam had gone without scoring a Test fifty for as many as 18 innings in Test cricket before he was dropped. The former captain began the three-match series with scores of 30 and 5 on a flat pitch in Multan where over 1300 runs were scored in the two first innings put together.
“Well again, I. I cannot answer that because I’m not a selector. But what I will say is that Babar is a fine player. I think he’s one of the best players in the world. And, yeah, he had a bit of a lean, lean patch, but I don’t think, but I don’t think many great players around the world have never had a lean patch,” Jason Gillespie told Sky Sports Cricket.
“I’m very confident. Babar Will will be back scoring a lot of runs for Pakistan in all formats. He’s just too good a player. He works really, really hard in his game. He’s very precise with his preparation and what he needs to do to get ready. I fully expect him to have a huge role, going forward in the next little while for Pakistan,” he added.
Pakistan selectors were made to look good as his replacement, Kamran Ghulam, hit a hundred on Test debut in Multan, playing a key role in Pakistan’s series-leveling win in the second Test.
