Babar Azam has become the fifth Pakistani captain to win his debut seriesafter Pakistan’s 2-0 series win over South Africa. The previous captain toachieve the feat was middle-order batsman Saleem Malik who won his debutseries against New Zealand in 1994.
Babar is the first Pakistani Test captain to clean-sweep an opponent in hisdebut series.——————————
Fazal Mahmood, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Javed Miandad are the other threePakistani captains in history to win their debut series. Mushtaq Mohammadand Javed Miandad won 3-match series against New Zealand and Australia witha margin of 2-0 and 1-0 respectively.
Babar was appointed as captain of the Test side prior to the team’s tour ofNew Zealand in December 2020. Babar suffered a thumb injury which ruled himout of the tour. Pakistan went onto lose the series 2-0 without theircaptain and spine of the batting unit. Babar stepped onto the field as Testcaptain for the first time against South Africa in the first Test match atNational Stadium Karachi.
This was Pakistan’s first Test series win against South Africa since 2004.Since 2004, Pakistan and South Africa have played six test series. SouthAfrica had won 4 of them and 2 series were drawn. Inzamam-ul-Haq, ShoaibMalik, Misbah-ul-Haq, and Sarfaraz Ahmed were the captains during the sixseries.——————————
Read Top Stories
Pakistan won both matches comfortably, winning the first by seven wicketsand the second by 95 runs. The series win also helped Pakistan leapfrog SriLanka and South Africa in the ICC team rankings and they are now rankedfifth in the world, their highest ranking since 2017.
Pakistan captains to win their debut Test series are as follows:*Captain* *Opponents* *Result* *Year*Fazal Mahmood West Indies 2-1 1959Mushtaq Mohammad New Zealand 2-0 1976Javed Miandad Australia 1-0 1980Saleem Malik New Zealand 2-1 1994Babar Azam South Africa 2-0 2021
