"It's not a crime to make mistakes": Pakistan team director Mickey Arthur backs skipper Babar Azam

On Friday, Geo News source reported that Babar Azam is likely to step down from the captaincy after the conclusion of the World Cup. Babar has been heavily criticised for some of his captaincy decisions by former Pakistan players, but Mickey backed Barbar, stating that making mistakes is not a crime.

"We were a real tight-knit unit. I get behind Babar. Babar is very, very close to me. He's a young guy that needs to be taken on the journey with. He needs to be shown the ropes. He's still learning all the time. We know he's a very, very fine batsman. He learns every day with his captaincy. He's growing, and we have to allow him the time to go. And in order to do that, you make mistakes. Everybody, it's not a crime to make mistakes as long as you learn from those mistakes, and as a group, we've made a lot of mistakes this World Cup but if this group grows and learns from it, we've got the core of a very, very good side," Mickey said in the post-match press conference.

The Pakistan team has received a lot of criticism from former players for their performance throughout the World Cup. From Babar's leaked chats to former cricketers claiming that Babar should resign from captaincy, the Pakistan team has faced a lot of criticism.

Mickey talked about the role of management when the team is surrounded by a lot of outside noise and said, "There's always outside noise; whatever World Cup you're at, there's outside noise. The key for us as leaders within that group is to make sure that we make the players deaf to that outside noise. As I say, for us as a group and us as a team, particularly for us as leaders, we've got to create a stable environment. Again, where I say consistent messaging, our messaging has to be consistent, and our environment has to be consistent and stable, because only then do you get players that grow. If the environment is unstable, what you find is you get players that ultimately, and rightly so, end up playing for themselves because they're playing for the next selection."

But he went on to admit that the team didn't perform well and deserved to finish in the fifth spot: "Inconsistency, unfortunately, doesn't breed success. But that is no excuse at all. The fact is, we haven't played well enough. We finished fifth, and fifth is where we deserve to finish with the cricket that we've played over the last six weeks." (ANI)