Pakistan cricket has had a rollercoaster year in 2024, with Babar Azam's resignation on October 2 just the latest chapter.
There aren't many years in which Pakistan cricket can be said to function as normal. But the past 9-12 months have been quite out there, even for one of the most popularly dysfunctional boards in world cricket.
Three captaincy stints, two resignations, one sacking, no ODIs
The previous calendar year ended in disappointing fashion, as Pakistan failed to make the top four of the 2023 World Cup, losing to Afghanistan along the way. That prompted the resignation of skipper Babar Azam, and he was replaced by Shan Masood in Test cricket and Shaheen Afridi in white-ball cricket.
If Pakistan were hoping for a magical turnaround, they were left disappointed.
On Pakistan's T20I tour of New Zealand in January, Shaheen only narrowly avoided suffering the ignominy of leading a team to a 5-0 series loss, as they went down 4-1. He was stripped of the captaincy soon after the series, with Babar reinstated. At the time of writing, that is the first and last time Shaheen has led Pakistan in T20I cricket.
With Babar's second resignation from white-ball captaincy earlier this week, Pakistan are set to embark on (yet another) new era. If you're still following, that means Pakistan will now enter their third different captaincy stint in limited-overs cricket in the last year.
Read more: Who should be Pakistan's next white-ball captain?
While the sequence of events is dramatic enough on its own, there has been more to it as well. After Shaheen lost his place at the helm in March, a PCB statement attributed to him a quote in support of Babar (remember, both Shaheen's predecessor and his successor), which he claimed he had never said. The bowler also went on to post a cryptic Instagram story containing the words "don't test my patience" later in the week.
Later that month, Pakistan drew a home T20I series 2-2 against New Zealand's virtual 'C' team, whose first-teamers were occupied with the IPL. In May, they suffered a shock loss to Ireland before losing the only two complete matches they played on their T20I tour of England.
