Salman Butt is Pakistan's best bet as captain
In just three Tests as Pakistan captain, Salman Butt has experienced all the highs and lows cricket has to offer
Tariq Engineer
25-Feb-2013
In just three Tests as Pakistan captain, Salman Butt has experienced all the highs and lows cricket has to offer. In his first Test after taking over from Shahid Afridi, Pakistan bowled Australia out for 88 and went to win the the second neutral Test to draw that series. Unfortunately for him, the team followed it up by being bowled out for 80 and 72 in successive Tests against England. Despite the ups and downs, Paul Weaver writes in the Guardian, that Butt is the best man to skipper Pakistan in these dark times.
This country produces some of the world's most richly gifted cricketers but their ability to self-destruct is even greater than that to detonate their opponents. They present madness in mime – earlier this month the former captain Aamer Sohail described Pakistan cricket as a "basket case".
Butt confounds this caricature; he is neither brilliantly talented nor chronically disruptive. He is, though, an impressive young man, and he speaks with a fluency and a quiet dignity in the middle of the wreckage of his country's cricket.
Tariq Engineer is a former senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo