Former Indian cricket team opener Gautam Gambhir was extremely critical of Babar Azam's captaincy after Pakistan failed to reach the Asia Cup 2023 final on Thursday. The Babar-led side was defeated by Sri Lanka in a last-ball thriller with Charith Asalanka scoring six runs in the final two balls of the encounter. Gambhir was not happy with Babar's field placements as well as his use of the Pakistan bowlers during the game and he said that they could have saved way more runs in the field with a few tweaks.
“For me, extremely ordinary captaincy as well. There was a four hit in Zaman Khan's over over mid-off and there was another four hit in Shaheen Shah Afridi's over over mid-off, and both those deliveries were slower ones. If you want to bowl slower ones, keep the mid-off fielder at long-off and bring the third man up. This is extremely simple captaincy. Imagine if you had 13 runs left in the last over, it would have been difficult for Sri Lanka,” Gambhir said in his analysis on Star Sports.
Kusal Mendis' 91 and an unbeaten 49 by Charith Asalanka helped Sri Lanka edged out Pakistan by two wickets in a last-ball thriller of the Asia Cup to set up a final clash with India.
Chasing a DLS revised target of 252 in the 42-overs-a-side contest in Colombo, Sri Lanka needed eight from the final over and achieved the target with Asalanka's winning hit on the last ball at 1.07 am local time.
“You were allowing the game to drift at one stage. You wanted to complete your sixth bowler's quota. It doesn't work out like that. When the partnership was developing between Kusal Mendis and Sadeera Samarawickrama, you should have brought on your main bowlers and tried to pick up wickets."
“Pakistan could have won this game only by taking wickets. If Sri Lanka had batted till the end, they could have won earlier than they actually did. I feel Babar Azam will have to be slightly better in his captaincy as ODI cricket is not like T20 cricket,” Gambhir concluded while speaking about the game.
(With AFP inputs)