Farhan Said Pakistan 'Doesn't Belong to Anyone' — Then Won 2-0 Without Babar and Rizwan

Pakistan cricket press conferences have a well-established rhythm. The captain praises the team. The journalists ask about Babar Azam. The captain says something diplomatic. Everyone goes home. Sahibzada Farhan, Pakistan's fourteenth T20I captain and eighth in just three years, broke the cycle on October 8 in Rawalpindi.

"This is the Pakistan team," he said. "It doesn't belong to anyone. Doors are open for everyone."

Read that again. A man appointed to lead a team that has been synonymous with two names — Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan — for the better part of five years just told the country that the jersey belongs to the jersey, not to the men who've been wearing it. In a Pakistani cricket culture that has historically revolved around strongmen captains and factional loyalties, that's not diplomacy. That's a manifesto.

The sheer absurdity of Pakistan's captaincy carousel deserves its own Wikipedia page. Since November 2023 — less than three years — the T20I armband has passed through Babar, Shaheen Afridi, Babar again, Rizwan, Salman Ali Agha, and now Farhan. Wisden called it "a revolving door that won't stop." India TV ran it as a headline: "Pakistan's merry-go-round with captaincy continues."

And yet Farhan, who inherited the job after Agha was sacked for Pakistan's T20 World Cup flameout — 91 runs in six matches from Babar at a strike rate of 112, an early exit — spoke as if none of that dysfunction mattered. Not with defiance. Not with insecurity. With the calm indifference of a man who understands that the captaincy is a chair, not a throne.

"I'm not thinking about whether I will get the captaincy in the future," he said. "As long as I am captain, I want to help Pakistan win matches in different ways."

If Farhan's press conference was the thesis statement, Maaz Sadaqat was the proof. The 21-year-old from Peshawar — who a few months ago was making history as the youngest centurion in CPL history for the Jamaica Kingsmen — walked into the Rawalpindi cauldron and played two innings that made you forget Babar Azam existed.

First T20I: 50 off 29 balls. A partnership of 92 with Farhan for the second wicket. Pakistan chased 183 with seven balls to spare.

Second T20I: 96 off 51 balls — six fours, seven sixes. He missed his maiden T20I century by four runs, caught at deep cover off a cutter on the final ball of the innings. Pakistan posted 215/3 and won by 82 runs. Series sealed.

Ian Bishop, who'd watched Sadaqat tear apart CPL bowling lineups all summer, saw the 96 and posted his verdict on X: a "nice 360 batter" with a career ahead of him. When a man who's called more T20 innings than anyone alive tags you as 360, the scouting report is complete.

The most telling reaction to Sadaqat's emergence came not from the commentary box but from the man whose T20I place he's essentially taken. Mohammad Rizwan posted a message after the second T20I recalling a young boy who once visited his Peshawar home with his brother Haroon, hoping to one day wear Pakistan's colours.

"That hope was visible in the boy's eyes," Rizwan wrote. Seeing Sadaqat now in a Pakistan shirt, he said, filled him with "immense happiness." He congratulated Farhan and the team on the series win.

It was gracious. It was genuine. And it was unmistakably the message of a man who understands that the page has turned. Rizwan didn't complain about being left out. He didn't question the selectors. He blessed the kid who replaced him. That tells you everything about where Pakistan cricket is heading.

Captains who talk big and fail are a dime a dozen. Farhan talked big and then scored 89 off 52 balls in the first T20I — ten fours, four sixes — chasing 183 alongside the man he'd publicly backed. He added 73 in the second. That's 162 runs in two matches from a captain who said "I want the top order to bat according to the T20 mindset" and then did exactly that.

This isn't the cautious, anchor-style batting that defined the Babar era in T20Is. This is a captain who opens with the explicit intention of attacking from ball one, who names Sadaqat and Fakhar Zaman as the template for what Pakistan's batting should look like, and who leads by doing it himself.

"There are no small or big teams in international cricket," Farhan said before the series. Pakistan promptly dismissed Sri Lanka for 133 in the second match, with Muhammad Imran Randhawa taking 3/11. The bowling attack, like the batting, looked liberated.

Pakistan have tried everything else. They've given the captaincy to their best batter. They've given it to their strike bowler. They've given it to the vice-captain, the keeper, the allrounder. They've changed coaches, restructured committees, fired selectors, and generated enough headlines to sustain an entire industry of cricket Twitter discourse.

And then they gave it to a man whose first instinct was to say: this jersey doesn't have a name on the back. And he went out and proved it, 2-0, with a 21-year-old Ian Bishop calls a "360 batter" and a 17,535-strong Rawalpindi crowd that couldn't care less whether Babar Azam was watching.

The third T20I is tomorrow. The series is already won. But the real victory happened at a press conference on October 8, when Pakistan's newest captain said what the country needed to hear: the team belongs to whoever earns it. Right now, that's Sahibzada Farhan.