Pakistan cricket team should bury the ghosts of the captaincy controversy and give their best to win the T20 World Cup, scheduled to be played in June, former cricketer Rashid Latif has said.

In an interview with Khaleej Times, Latif hoped that Babar and Shaheen would put the controversy behind them and give their best in the T20 series against New Zealand which starts on April 18.

“They have to start winning matches, they have no other option now. A T20 World Cup is coming up this year, so they need to find their best form as a team and start winning matches,” Latif said.

In the recent past, Pakistan cricket has seen some major changes including the selection committee and the captaincy after former bureaucrat Mohsin Naqvi took charge as the board chairman.

Just two months before the T20 World Cup, the board unceremoniously removed Shaheen Shah Afridi from the captaincy of the shortest format of the game. It brought back Babar Azam as the skipper in the white-ball cricket.

Reports say the development did not go well with the pacer who was lacking form and had a bad run in the Pakistan Super League. The matter got worse when the board endorsed a statement attributed to him in the press release on Babar’s captaincy without his consent, prompting Naqvi to hold crisis talks.

The Green Shirts would play New Zealand and Ireland before the mega event in June. The tournament would be played in the United States and West Indies.

“We have a good team, good players. So to overcome this issue, the best way will be to win and if they can win the World Cup, it will be the perfect response from the team,” the former wicket-keeper batter said.

Latif blamed the instability in the Pakistan Cricket Board for the captaincy fiasco.

“It all happened because the new chairman (Mohsin Naqvi) wanted to change the captain, he had already made changes in the selection committee. So all these constant changes create a lot of instability,” he said.

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But he added that this has been the case from 1992 onwards as frequent changes were made in the board. “We have seen so many different captains as well.”

He was confident that the left-arm bowler would overcome all the challenges to lead the Pakistan bowling attack.

“Look, form comes and goes. Shaheen is a proven performer at the highest level, I am sure he is soon going to find his top form,” he said.