Captain Cool has been a term synonymous with Indian Cricket Team's former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni for over 10 years now. Cricket pundits across the world have applauded his cool demeanour and not crumbling under pressure attitude. Cricket is a religion in the sub-continent and we all know how sensitive we are about our religion. Captaining the Indian Cricket Team is no easy task and even greats of the game like Sachin Tendulkar failed to perform under the burden of captaincy. Dhoni's captaincy starting from the 2007 T20 World Cup along with his match finishing skills proved that he rightfully earned the title of 'Captain Cool'.
Move to 2017. Dhoni is no longer the Indian Cricket Team captain. The reins of the team have been taken over by young, aggressive and one of the finest batsmen of current times 'Virat Kohli'. However, away from all the limelight has emerged another 'Captain Cool' who has taken his young and unpredictable team from ashes to glory.
Pakistan's qualification to the Champions Trophy was in doubts, let alone them winning the trophy. Nobody gave them any chance whatsoever. Their inaugural match against India ended in a not so humble defeat and it seemed a mere formality of completing their games and taking their flight home. There were memes and 'baap-beta' jokes all over the internet, people had started predicting the semi finalists, defending champions India and hosts England were the bookies' favorite, even Bangladesh was not written off. But, Pakistan was nowhere in the picture. However, amidst all the hullabaloo, a 'not so dynamic' but super cool man kept his calm, collected the broken pieces, took one step at a time and took his team to glory. Pakistan skipper Sarfraz Ahmed had done the unthinkable.
Karachi born Sarfraz had shown glimpses of his leadership skills when he led the junior Pakistan team to title victory in the Under-19 World Cup in 2006 where Pakistan defeated arch rivals India. A year later, he made his senior side debut against (yes, u guessed it right) India. At first glance, nothing seems special about Sarfraz. He does not have a presence, nor is he exceptionally good looking or intimidating like his predecessors Imran Khan or Wasim Akram. He is not even an interesting character like Afridi. Sarfraz is plain boring to the eye, a guy next door. But, do not let the looks fool you. Behind this 'simple' looking man lies a man with grit of steel. Another important factor to look into is when he was handed the ODI captaincy, the Pakistan team was in shambles and looked years behind the modern day game. After a first round exit from the 2015 ODI World Cup, Azhar Ali led Pakistan to a humiliating 3-0 whitewash in Bangladesh and 4-1 defeats to both England and Australia. No international matches in Pakistan only made matters worse. Pakistan was fighting corruption, fixing allegations and board politics when he was made the skipper. Any data analytics team after looking at such unimpressive data would have written the team off. All Sarfraz got was a team with no superstars of the game, as many as 3 debutants for the Champions Trophy and a reputation of even losing matches from winning situations and he did the improbable.
A young Mahendra Singh Dhoni performed a similar feat 10 years back when he led a young Indian brigade fresh from the wounds of the ODI World Cup first round exit to T20I World Cup title glory. Over the next 10 years, Dhoni time and again justified his 'Captain Cool' tag with ingenious and gritty knocks at crunch situations to bail his team through. It is too early to predict if Sarfraz is the new captain cool or if he will be as successful as Dhoni but he has definitely given a hope. His job now will be even more difficult with fans expecting a similar performance everytime he takes the field. He now is the Pakistan captain across all 3 formats and only time will tell if he will be able to fill in the shoes of its most successful Test captain Misbah. Keeping all apprehensions aside, I hope this is a new dawn in Pakistan cricket as for this gentleman's game to survive,one of its strongest pillars must be up and running.
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