Babar Azam to team: ‘Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge’  

“Everybody is feeling the pain. Where we made mistakes and where we should have done better, everybody is realising that through pain. Nobody will tell us this. We know. But we have to learn from this. We have become a unit and it must not be broken,” Babar told his teammates.

The Pakistan Cricket Board shared the skipper’s dressing-room speech on their Twitter handle and Babar was seen imploring his colleagues not to get into any blame game.

“Nobody should point a finger towards the other, that somebody has done this, somebody has done that. We will learn from this and will not repeat our mistakes in the future. Am telling you, this bond must not break just for one defeat. This is the time to help each other,” Babar went on before handing over the floor to batting consultant Matthew Hayden.

“We put in every last bit of effort that we could. Left nothing on the field of play. And we should be all proud,” Hayden said.

Pakistan cricket has had a history of dressing-room bickering. In fact, very few Pakistan captains have managed to keep team together off-field. Imran Khan was an exception under whom the team gelled and won the 1992 World Cup. Babar, who took the reins of Pakistan’s white-ball team only about a couple of months ago, has led by example at the T20 World Cup, scoring 303 runs in six matches.

Meanwhile, fast bowler Hassan Ali, who didn’t have a good game with the ball and dropped Matthew Wade at a very crucial moment, was subjected to vile abuse on social media after the defeat.