The current captain of the Pakistan cricket team Babar Azam has refused the Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) offer of keeping him only as a Test captain, sources reported on Wednesday.
Babar met with the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Management Committee Zaka Ashraf today and he was informed that the board desires to keep him as a red-ball captain but he would replaced as a captain in white-ball cricket.
Babar informed the board that he would prefer to resign from all formats and left the meeting.
The PCB has not revealed the names of potential candidates who will replace the 29-year-old but Shan Masood is likely to take the place of Azam as a captain for the Australia Tour while Shaheen Shah Afridi will take the realm in T20I series against New Zealand.
Shaheen might also lead the Green Shirts in next year's T20 World Cup, the sources said.
Babar was appointed white-ball captain in 2019 and as Test skipper in 2020, but the Green Shirts have not won any ICC or Asia Cup titles under his leadership.
Although the Pakistan team went into the World Cup ranked as the top side, they failed to prove their mettle and crashed out of the tournament in the group stage.
They created multiple unwanted records as the team lost four consecutive matches and five overall in the mega event, for the first time in Pakistan's history.
Other than that, Babar's performance as a batter was not according to his standards as the right-handed batter only managed to amass 320 runs in nine World Cup matches at a 40.00 average with a strike rate of 82.90.
It must be noted that the World Cup 2023 was Azam's fifth tournament as a captain after the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cup and 2022 and 2023 Asia Cup where the failed to bag any silverware.
Sohail Imran Sohail Imran is a senior reporter for Geo News.- Babar Azam