Babar Azam will miss the remainder of the Big Bash League as the Sydney Sixers announced on Thursday that their opener had been recalled to Pakistan for a national team camp ahead of a T20I series against Australia next week.<\/p>\n
The announcement came just ahead of the Sixers\u2019 challenger final against Hobart Hurricanes today, with the winner to play Perth Scorchers in the BBL final in Perth on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Babar thanked his team and coaches in a video message shared by the Sydney Sixers and BBL on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have very much enjoyed my time here, and unfortunately, I\u2019m going to leave the team because of national duty,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a lot of things to take back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pakistan has yet to announce its squad for the three-match series with Australia beginning January 29 in Lahore. The series will serve as a warm-up for the ICC Men\u2019s T20 World Cup next month.<\/p>\n
So far, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has not issued a statement on recalling Babar.<\/p>\n
According to Cricinfo, Babar had initially been available for the entire tournament and was not selected in Pakistan\u2019s three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Sixers general manager Rachael Haynes confirmed that they had initially planned for Babar to play the entire tournament and were \u201csincerely grateful for the opportunity to have had Babar represent the club during his time in Australia\u201c.<\/p>\n
All of Australia\u2019s squad members who are still involved in the BBL will remain with their BBL teams until after the final on Jan 25, with the rest of the squad flying to the UAE for a pre-tour camp on Jan 24.<\/p>\n
The news comes just two days after Sixers captain Moises Henriques revealed that it took Babar \u201ca couple of days\u201d to settle after being \u201cquite upset\u201d at Steven Smith denying him a single against Sydney Thunder, Cricinfo reported.<\/p>\n
Cricket Australia reported that commentator and former Australian batter Mark Waugh called for the Sixers to drop Babar when speaking on Fox Cricket before Wednesday\u2019s Hurricanes-Stars Knockout match.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, I\u2019m going to have to drop Babar Azam. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s done enough at the top of the order.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he\u2019s world-class, but you\u2019re thinking about winning this tournament, and so far he just hasn\u2019t done (enough),\u201d Cricket Australia quoted Waugh as saying. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about a new opener.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Babar Azam will miss the remainder of the Big Bash League as the Sydney Sixers announced on Thursday that their opener had been recalled to Pakistan for a national team camp ahead of a T20I series against Australia next week. The announcement came just ahead of the Sixers\u2019 challenger final against Hobart Hurricanes today, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15452,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450\/revisions\/15452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}