Babar Azam is facing the heat. The Pakistan captain has been subjected to pure vitriol, with the ARN – Abdul Razzaq Network – leading the way. Razzaq, an all-rounder of some distinction who played in the side that reached the 1999 World Cup final, has been at the forefront of a malicious campaign against Babar, which has peaked in the last few days.
Agreed, the Pakistan captain and his team have bombed at the box office in the ICC World Cup, but to subject him to harsh, cheap words and ask for his head to roll is insensitive. Perhaps as a direct result of this attack on Babar Azam and the team doing badly, Inzamam-ul-Haq, the former Pakistan captain who was the chief selector, resigned on Monday.
First things first. Knee-jerk reactions from the public when a team does badly are very common in India and Pakistan. Cricket is referred to as a religion on the subcontinent and fans go berserk when the national team does badly. There have been numerous instances in the past when stones have been thrown at cricketers’ houses in India.
These days, there is a new toxic platform as well called social media, where targeting players or anyone else is so easy. Since the time Pakistan lost to India in Ahmedabad, the heat has been on. Perhaps, the flash point came when the Pakistan team, touted to win the World Cup, lost to Afghanistan last week.
It was hard to digest the defeat, given the political relations between the two countries. If cricket fans and media channels in India move into overdrive and launch malicious campaigns when the team does badly, Pakistan is no different. The PCB, for its part, have also not helped, with injudicious media releases aimed only at safeguarding their jobs.
Mickey Arthur, Pakistan’s team director, has repeatedly spoken of how unfair it is to target Babar. For someone who has performed well for Pakistan in the past, Babar does not know what to do. As a diplomat on the field, he has behaved very responsibly. His glowing praise for Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli was surprising to some. Yet, the worst part is he has to face the heat with abusive language part of the hit job.
When a digital platform itself takes the lead, they become influencers at large. It is well known the way Pakistan has treated even Imran Khan, former cricket team captain and Prime Minister. He is still languishing in jail, with little possibility of immediate release.
If the ARN network is to be blamed, even Wasim Akram, left-arm pace legend who was man of the match in the 1992 final, has been ruthless. A YouTube video where he asked the Pakistan cricketers if they were overeating meat by the kilo went viral. Akram is an icon who is also an influencer. So, when he fan the flames, the chants against Babar grow louder.
It is not as if the entire Pakistan media fraternity supports this chorus for sacking Babar. A couple of Pakistani journalists who spoke to this writer said this was not needed. “There is an agenda against Babar Azam and the least they could have done was to wait till the end of the World Cup campaign,” said Nadira Mushtaque, a prominent TV journalist. “What Inzamam has done today is also nonsense, trying to save his skin.”
Some posts on social media platforms like X (Twitter) are still trending with the hashtag of Babar being the GOAT (Greatest Of all Time). The damage, though, has been done and Babar will dread flying back to Pakistan. Indeed, when the team flew to India earlier this month, the situation back home was so different. Cricket fans in Pakistan dreamt that they were going to win the World Cup. Now, all that hope has been replaced by hatred and insensitivity.