Credit: X
The former Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Amir took an indirect dig at Mohammad Rizwan after the wicket-keeper batter remarked that breaking his opening partnership with Babar Azam in T20Is has hurt the national team. The 31-year-old wasn’t impressed with Mohammad Rizwan while stating that he had his fun for four years, and now the youngsters should be persisted with.
After Pakistan lost their fourth consecutive T20I against New Zealand away from home, Mohammad Rizwan commented in the press conference that the opening partnership hadn’t worked out with the young opener Saim Auyb. At the same time, he also reiterated that the adverse effects of breaking his opening partnership with Babar Azam will be visible eventually.
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Mohammad Rizwan was quoted as saying, as per Wisden, “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,” he added. Notably, during the first four T20Is against New Zealand, the opening partnership of Saim Ayub and Mohammad Rizwan had stands of 33, 8, 23, and 5, which isn’t an ideal start, especially with four straight losses for Pakistan.
The comments from Mohammad Rizwan led to Mohammad Amir, the former Pakistan fast bowler, sending out a post on his official X account, indirectly telling him to give time to his opening partnership with Saim Ayub rather than being the gatekeeper of the team.
He said, “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 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).”
For the fifth and final T20I of the series, Pakistan replaced Saim Ayub with Haseebullah Khan, who was dismissed without troubling the scorers in the first over. Although the Pakistan cricket team could only score 134/8 in their allotted 20 overs, they managed to successfully defend the small total by bowling out New Zealand for just 92 runs.
