Sarfraz Ahmed: Skipper on track to success
If Sarfraz can maintain a decent win rate for the remainder of his career, he could possibly finish as the most successful Pakistani captain of all time. Photo: ICC
By Sohaib Ahmed
2017 has brought a major change of fortunes and success for the Pakistan cricket team in the shorter formats of cricket. Perhaps a lot of that can be credited to Coach Mickey Arthur, or perhaps it could be credited to the Pakistan Super League, which has allowed young players such as Hasan Ali and Fakhar Zaman to blossom and play in extremely competitive matches.
But the common denominator throughout all the success has been the captaincy of Sarfraz Ahmed.
Sarfraz Ahmed was given the Twenty20 captaincy after a horrifying 2016 World Twenty20 campaign when Shahid Afridi was sacked. And after skippering a one-off match in 2015, Sarfraz was given the ODI captaincy in February 2017 following the resignation of Azhar Ali.
Sarfraz celebrating after playing the winning shot against Sri Lanka in the ICC Champions Trophy 2017. Photo: Getty Images
Cricket is all about statistics. And although it is still early days in his hopefully long captaincy career, it is still worthy to take a look at his results so far in his career. Going into the three-match Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka, his Twenty20 captaincy record is an impressive 9 wins and 2 losses. But it is his ODI captaincy that really stands out. His first captaincy assignment was earlier this year, and resulted in an ODI series win against the West Indies in the Caribbean. After that he led Pakistan to the historic Champions Trophy win in England, and that was followed by a 5-0 whitewash of Sri Lanka.
Compared to the rest of the world, Sarfraz has had a phenomenal win rate in 2017. His Win/Loss ratio stands at 5.500, which is 146% better than the second best captain this year, Eoin Morgan. Sarfraz s win percentage in 2017 is a remarkable 84.62%, and reflects an extraordinary start to his captaincy career. The following table shows the results of all ODI captains in 2017.
ODI cricket captains in 2017. Photo: CricInfo
Furthermore, taking a look at Sarfraz s captaincy career statistics, and comparing it to all Pakistani ODI captains in history, his performance so far as captain becomes even more impressive. In a list full of captains like Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and Inzamam-ul-Haq, Sarfraz s Win/Loss ratio is triple that of the next best Pakistani captain, Shoaib Malik. The following table shows the W/L ratios of all Pakistani captains in ODI history.
Win/Loss ratio of all Pakistan Cricket Team captains till November 2017. Photo: CricInfo
In addition to the Champions Trophy title his side lifted earlier this year, his ODI career win percentage stands at 85.71%. If we analyse this chart a little further, Shoaib Malik s Win/Loss ratio is slightly inflated due to a 10-match win streak against two very weak sides at the time, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. If those 10 wins are excluded, along with the exclusion of Intikhab Alam and Salim Malik due to the small number of matches they captained, the next best captain on the list, Wasim Akram had a W/L ratio of 1.609.
Thus, that would mean that if Sarfraz can maintain a decent win rate for the remainder of his career, he could possibly finish as the most successful Pakistani captain of all time. Only time will tell if this happens, but after so much disappointment in the preceding years for the Pakistani cricket team, suddenly we are in the midst of watching a historic story develop in the team s folklore.
Pakisan Cricket Team after winning the final of ICC Champions Trophy 2017 against India, under Sarfraz’s captaincy. Photo: Getty Images
Sohaib is one of the founders of the popular cricket group Cornered Tigers, and he tweets @Sobob99
