The Career Saving Performance
A player who made his debut in the year of 2010 which was not known for much good news in Pakistan’s cricketing history yet it proved to be a great year as far as debutants were considered. Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq, Umar Amin, Umar Akmal, Fawad Alam and the likes of other promising talent rose to the scene. All of the mentioned players showed a lot of promise but were either not consistent enough or not given enough chances. Although, Azhar Ali was one player who was able to secure his position in the Test format. After 10 years of cricketing career, he stands at over 6,000 test runs, averaging above 40 and 17 centuries to his credit. Not only this, he has been able to lead the national team in limited overs, whereas, at present, he is the captain of test team.
All of this cricketing years came to question when Azhar Ali’s last 2-3 years after MisYou (Misbah and Younus) has been quite dismal. This has caused a dip in the batting performance of the test team but a big thank you to the likes of Babar Azam who had rescued the batting time and again. With age getting to late 30s’ and performance dipping with captaincy record also not a very promising one, the career of Azhar Ali was on the brink of shutdown. With 2 tests completed and no big score to his name along with losing the 1st test from a winning position also proved to be a last nail in the coffin. In such a situation, there was nothing to lose but to come out as victorious. This very moment changed the entire landscape of Azhar Ali’s career.
With a slight change in his batting technique as advocated by Younus Khan (Pakistan’s batting coach), he was able to negotiate England’s bowling in tough conditions. He not only negotiated the bowling but was able to score big runs with 1st test century in England and 3rd against them. The entire innings of Pakistan ended but Azhar went not out with scoring 141 runs. In that innings, more than 50% of the Pakistan’s batting runs came from the bat of Azhar Ali. This isn’t the first time that Azhar has punched back with his performance. He was pushed to the back when selected for limited overs but gave some consistent performances to prove his position. He also scored a double century against Australia in Australia against a very good bowling line up.
But yes for the first time, he has been able to do what other modern day great batsmen do, go to the nets and change strategy for performing at the biggest level. His career might be on the verge of coming to close but he surely can represent the country for at least next 2-3 years based on performance and fitness. Although, this performance has been able to save his career as an international player but his captaincy will still remain under question. What Azhar Ali needs to do is to perform outstandingly well as far as batting is concerned so at least, one end is saved and then to work on his captaincy skills. The performances in batting will also help him in captaining the side better as it could be observed from the past.