Former Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Akhtar has criticised current Test team captain Babar Azam for his captaincy which has led Pakistan to lose the three-match Test series to England.

“Babar’s personality is visible in his captaincy, decision making and his game which is why he is now struggling badly,” Akhtar said in a conversation with a Pakistan channel.

His comments came on a day when Pakistan finally showed some fight with the three-match series already lost. After getting bundled out for 133 in the first innings and watching England pile on 453 in the Edgbaston Test, Pakistan held their own, reaching 297/5 at Tea on the third day of the final Test. Babar led from the front, scoring 76 off 103 with 11 fours and hitting Pakistan’s only six of the match. In the first innings, Babar was sent back after an 18-ball seven.

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“He (Babar) is unable to make the right calls. Had it been me, everyone knows what would have happened. That is a very simple thing,” said Akhtar, answering former cricketer Tanveer Ahmed’s question about how he would have handled the situation on a show called Silly Point.

“You cannot ask too much from this team, including the captain and the rest of the pack. You can’t ask too much. What can you expect from them? It’s a failure of the system. I think the investment we made in this system and the confidence we placed in it has failed,” he said.

Before Friday, Pakistan lost the first Test at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs and then the second Test to England at Lord’s by 194 runs. This led the Pakistan Cricket Board to remove seven players from the side and ship them back to Pakistan while also sacking head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and his assistant Umar Gul with Pakistan white-ball coach Mike Hesson and former Australia seamer Ashley Noffke taking charge for the final Test.

PCB also announced an “internal disciplinary inquiry” with the data from the phones of two players reportedly copied by PCB.