Shaheen Afridi Unhappy With How Captains Are Made Scapegoats for Team’s Poor Performance [Video]

Pakistan T20 skipper Shaheen Shah Afridi expressed his views on his arduous journey as a captain of Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 9 on Tuesday in a podcast with franchise owner Sameen Rana.

The 24-year-old lamented that in Pakistan there is a culture of making the captain a scapegoat and emphasized that people often forget that many more entities are involved in the decision-making on and off the field.

“Cricket is a team game of eleven players but unfortunately the captain is blamed and is often demanded to be removed when a team loses, but this is not the right way.”

The left-arm pacer was appointed as the Qalandars captain in 2022 at the age of 21 and under his captaincy Lahore won the PSL title for the first time in their history while also becoming the first team to win back-to-back titles in 2023.

Despite helping Lahore achieve glory and an unprecedented status in the PSL, his performances and captaincy have come under a lot of scrutiny. Ever since he became the captain of Pakistan’s T20 side this year his form has deteriorated while the Qalandars finished bottom of the table with a single victory.

Shaheen was appointed as Pakistan’s T20I captain in November under the Zaka Ashraf-led PCB administration and since then he has led Pakistan in a five-match T20I series away from home against New Zealand where Pakistan lost 4-1.

There have been reports that the current chairman PCB Mohsin Naqvi is thinking along the lines of changing the personnel in captaincy for the upcoming T20I World Cup that will be held in the USA and the Caribbean this June.

Pakistan’s captaincy is like a crown of thorns and Babar Azam went under the same criticism and scrutiny that Shaheen is facing now at a very young age.