New Delhi: After disappointing the fans with a terrible performance in the ICC World Cup 2023, Pakistani cricket team’s skipper Babar Azam finally flew back home on Sunday.
Upon his arrival at the Lahore airport, the ace batsman found himself encircled by a large group of fans who did something unexpected that even surprised the 29-year-old cricketer.
Babar Azam gets surrounded at Lahore Airport
Despite Babar and his team’s complete failure in the World Cup 2023, the Pakistani fans began to cheer up their captain as soon as they spotted their caption near the exit of Lahore airport. Some of them even hounded the cricketer and tried to get a picture with him.
However, the securing personnel, who were there at the spot, safely escorted Babar out of the airport and took him to his car. A visit of the whole incident is now going viral on social media.
Warm welcome for the King Babar Azam at Airport ❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z2Ea1HLJKj
— SAAD 🇵🇰 (@SaadIrfan258) November 12, 2023
Notably, Captain Babar Azam has been a target of trolls and critics who are behind his captaincy ever since Pakistan exited from World Cup 2023 with a lot of bad memories.
Pakistan’s Campaign in World Cup 2023
After receiving a warm welcome in India, Babar’s Pakistani team started their World Cup 2023 campaign with a bang and won their first two games convincingly in Hyderabad.
However, after receiving a crushing defeat at the hands of India on 15th October in Gujrat’s Narendra Modi stadium, the green team fell apart and went on to lose their next three against Afghanistan, Australia, and South Africa.
Although they won a following rain-affected encounter against New Zealand and kept their Semi-final hope alive for a little while, the same got crushed to ashesafter Kiwis slammed Sri Lanka by 5 wickets and Pakistan faced a ‘mission impossible’ task of beating the defending champions England by 287 runs in order to make it to the knockout stage of the multinational tournament.
However, let alone winning by 287 runs, the men in green received a huge 93-run defeat by England which threw them out of the World Cup 2023.
Babar wants to learn from mistake
Speaking in a post-match conference after losing against England, Pakistani captain Babar Azam accepted that his team’s bowling unit gave away way too many runs and the same took away the game from them in the first innings itself. He later said that he and his team are willing to learn from their mistakes and make a comeback in the coming future.
“We conceded a few too many runs. We bowled a few loose deliveries towards the end. And our spinners’ aren’t taking wickets, which doesn’t help. That has a big effect because you need to take wickets in the middle overs. The pitch is very true and the margin of error is very low for fast bowlers, which explains the big scores we have conceded. We will sit together and take stock. We’ll take positives from this and discuss mistakes. I’m keen to lead the rebuild”, remarked the Pakistani caption in the press conference.
Notably, Babar scored 320 Runs with a relatively low strike rate of 82 in his 9 innings of the 2023 ODI World Cup. Although the star batter crossed the 50-run mark 4 times, he failed to smash even a single ton throughout the tournament.
