The battle for captaincy is on…

Afridi or Misbah? Who will be captain? Who is more cut out to do the job? Who will lead our national side to glory? These are few of the questions haunting Pakistan cricket for now. The world cup has eluded us for nearly two decades and this recent debate
about who is the more suitable candidate has put more question marks on Pakistan’s ability to win the coveted prize. With less than a month to go before the mega competition begins our cricket chiefs decided that their earlier decision and their initial choice
for captaincy needed some reevaluation. As a result what has happened is that we have Misbah back in the one day side (after a long absence) playing under Afridi and threatening to steal his leadership role from right under his nose. To make matters worse
for Afridi, Misbah is playing exceptionally well. His recent rise in form is a great thing for a team, who has for some time now longed for some consistency in the middle order. Misbah has the talent and the technique to lead by example but will he be able
to deliver if entrusted with this enormous responsibility? Afridi on the other hand hasn’t performed exceedingly well in recent times and is still in the process of finding his footing. He has to his credit at times captained the side with the right attitude
and has been honest with his methods. But he has not been successful at doing this on a consistent basis. So now who is the more suitable candidate? The last question needs a quick and sound answer. But the other question that entails this very important query
is whether this is the right time for this kind of a change or not? A change such as this could play a pivotal role, if Pakistan is to again win the world cup. The debacle in the last one day against New Zealand needs to be taken into consideration. Was that
a result of the announcement or the non announcement? People would probably argue that the confusion in the team was the root cause of the poor show. Others might insist that’s how our team has always played cricket and they continue to play in their own way
regardless of what happens around them. If we look at the cricket teams statistics it would probably confirm the latter. The cricket lovers are divided and so are the opinions of our former greats. Abdul Qadir, the former test spinner, believes that this strategy
of not naming the captain for the world cup is a good one and will keep Afridi under pressure. It’s understandable that Afridi would be under pressure to perform but this pressure could easily go against the team and result in a disastrous series against the
black caps. The team spirits could easily suffer a serious blow at this critical time.