Azhar needs to step up and take charge

As Pakistan stumbled to their third consecutive loss to England in the ODI series last week, there was a distinct sense of unease about the future of Azhar Ali's captaincy. He leads in a format in which he has never quite settled, and presides over two ex-captains in the side (and another two who captain in the other formats) - his reign has always had a sense of borrowed time. Yet there is reason to suggest that his side is on the verge of becoming a strong, competitive team.

The series win against a transitioning Sri Lankan side marked a confident run after the debut series blanking versus Bangladesh (the shock of which was eased due to subsequent series defeats against the same opposition for India and South Africa). However, there were problems even in that series win, and those spilled over in the matches against England.

Foremost of those concerns was Azhar's batting at the top, which had been the strongest argument for his captaincy. His record as captain has seen his average improve by two runs and strike rate go up nearly 10 points, but he has thrown away his starts in his last two series: he has been dismissed under 20 only three times in his last 12 innings, yet he has only one fifty to his name in this time.

The situation has been exacerbated by the batting tactics, where Azhar has now had six different opening partners in 17 games as captain and opener. There's similar inconsistency in the meat of the batting, where ten different batsmen have appeared between positions three and five during Azhar's captaincy.

A significant concern has also been the form of Sarfraz Ahmed, who has been moved up and down the order repeatedly. At the start of the year, his charge-and-mow to cow corner had Shaun Pollock exclaiming in Hindi. But in the series against England, the same shot caused his dismissal in almost half his outings. Injuries to Haris Sohail and Imad Wasim haven't helped. And each series has seen some batsmen find form while others have lost it.

Despite these issues, the batting has performed relatively better than the bowling - where too Azhar's side has shown puzzling tactics. The most significant one is also that which poses problems in the lower order - the selection of Anwar Ali. Two years since his debut, his bowling figures are atrocious. Worse still, he has been used primarily as a new-ball bowler though his stats are better when he comes on first change. The logic behind that seems to be that Wahab Riaz doesn't like bowling with the new ball, and Anwar's batting settles the case for picking him over another new-ball bowler like Rahat Ali.

Yasir Shah and Wahab have the most wickets by any bowlers under Azhar, with 16 apiece, yet the leggie went wicketless five times, and Wahab seven times, in 12 innings each.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Irfan seems to be bowling in the form of his life, yet he hasn't picked up more than three wickets in any match under Azhar.

And all this is without taking into account the problem with the fifth bowler, an issue that has particularly bedevilled Pakistan since Mohammad Hafeez's bowling ban. Shoaib Malik is averaging at Anwar Ali levels with the ball, but a lack of allrounders has left Pakistan persisting with four and a half bowlers, three of whom are regularly unreliable.

All this has meant that Azhar's on-field captaincy has none of the control with which Misbah-ul-Haq shrewdly marshalled his resources. That is a considerable disadvantage, given that he is already far more reactive than his predecessor and isn't yet able to effect changes with his tactics. Perhaps the most shocking indicator in this regard was that in the recent series the English spinners outperformed their Pakistani counterparts.

Yet despite all these concerns, there's plenty to cheer about in Azhar's team, and as I argued above, reason to believe that it has a future. For starters, several players have emerged onto the main stage this year. Mohammad Rizwan has had a breakthrough year, and Babar Azam, Imad and Sohail have shown that they can belong at the top.

Then, there has been the elevation of Hafeez's form. He has looked imperious at times during England's tour. Having once developed his bowling to compensate for his batting form, he has now moved his batting up a gear since losing his bowling. After a horror tour in Bangladesh (bar for the Test double-hundred), the Professor has put up big scores in every series since, holding up a sputtering order around him. Even Azhar's problems come with the caveat that he has been developing his game rapidly, and he now plays certain shots confidently that he rarely even used before.

The challenge is to get the whole to exceed the sum of these disparate parts. Both Azhar and Irfan need stable partners at the top of their respective orders, allowing the team to feed off them. That stability must also extend to the rest of the batting, where the personnel and their positions need to be defined. It is likely that one of Malik, Rizwan and Sarfraz will need to make way for the likes of Babar or Haris, but any one of these decisions, once made, would need to be stuck with. The constant shuffling has created entropy rather than versatility, and its benefits are yet to be seen.

Over at the bowling, while it seems that the team management remains wedded to playing two allrounders out of five bowlers, there is a strong case to give that role to someone other than Anwar Ali at this point. That change would also force one in the new-ball pair, and Junaid Khan and Rahat would both make good choices if Wahab isn't able to raise his game here, like he has done in the Tests. There is also a need to ask more from the tailenders, who have to catch up to how the rest of the world's bowlers now bat.

Some might argue that most of these changes have been enforced by the team management and not Azhar himself. However, if all these moments of hope are to be converted into something that endures, it will have to start with the captain taking ownership of the team evolving underneath him.