Former Pakistan pacer Mohammad Amir has hit back at wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan over his comments on how breaking his opening partnership with Babar Azam in T20Is has hurt Pakistan.
Following the defeat in the fourth T20I, Rizwan mentioned that breaking up the opening pair had negatively impacted Pakistan. During the post-match conference, he stated, “You can say that it [breaking the opening pair] has hurt Pakistan. I have told you before, you will see the effects eventually.
“Regarding the opening pair, we have spoken to the management, captain and Hafeez bhai, and I can only say that Babar bhai has a big heart. We both agreed there’s no issue, whatever they want to try, they should experiment.
“What’s tough is, when you break things and the Pakistan public sees the one thing that was going well, but the management was trying to experiment.”
Amir appears to have subtly criticised Rizwan, stating that he himself relished batting at the top for four years and implying that Rizwan is not affording the 21-year-old Ayub even four games to establish his position. Amir, however, refrained from explicitly mentioning the recipient of his tweet, instead using the term 'Bhai Jaan' (brother), but it seems to be directed at Rizwan based on his remarks.
He wrote on X in Urdu (formerly Twitter), “Bhai jaan khud 4 saal maze kiye hain bachon k 4 matches k failure se khuch hurt ni hwa jab different cheezen try ki jati hain un ko time dena parta hai bara simple hai.”
[Brother, you have had fun for four years. No one is getting hurt if youngsters fail for four games. When you try new things, you need to give them time. It’s that simple.]”
It must be noted that Rizwan and Babar opened together in 51 T20I innings, scoring 2,400 runs at an average of 48.97. They were the only pair to score more than 500 runs at the top of the order for the team, with eight hundred-plus stands. However, their strike rate was often a bone of contention, with both players batting conservatively more often than not.
Ahead of the New Zealand T20Is, the management decided to switch their opening pair after three years, pushing Saim Ayub up the order alongside Rizwan instead, with Babar dropping down. Team director Mohammad Hafeez reportedly conveyed to the former skipper that he was no longer being considered as an opener in the format.
The Ayub-Rizwan pair has yet to yield the desired results. In the four T20Is against New Zealand, they have made 69 runs at an average of 17.25 though their batting strike rate of 8.44 is slightly higher than the 7.92 Rizwan and Babar managed. Ayub and Rizwan have managed a best opening stand of 33 in the first T20I, after which they have notched up partnerships of 8, 23 and 5. Pakistan have lost all four games in the series.
- Mohammad Amir
- Mohammad Rizwan
