Pakistan white-ball coach Mike Hesson has categorically denied speculations about Babar Azam being asked to take up wicketkeeping to make his way back to the T20I side. Speaking to the media on Thursday, Hesson said he had heard the rumors, but Babar was only competing for ‘one of the opening positions’. Babar has never kept wickets in his career. While still around the ODI team, he has fallen out of favor in the shortest format, with Pakistan playing a five-T20I series against New Zealand and a three-match one against Bangladesh without him. He’s also not part of the squad that’ll travel to Bangladesh later this month. “Firstly, Babar Azam is not seen as a wicketkeeping option, no,” Hesson said before a week-long camp in Karachi with the selected squad, as quoted by ESPNcricinfo. “Not sure where that came from, but I have heard that speculation. Babar is competing for one of the opening positions at the moment. But obviously we have Fakhar [Zaman] and Saim [Ayub] in those two roles at the moment, so he’s competing for that.” His phasing-out has followed criticism over his strike rates in the format (129.22 overall after 128 T20Is) and inability to develop out of the old-school ways of run aggregation in an increasingly cut-throat era. Babar is part of the camp in Karachi, and so is his long-time partner Mohammad Rizwan, who is also out of the Bangladesh tour, which begins on July 20, and has faced similar reproval. The twin series against the Tigers is Hesson’s first in the job, as he aims to turn around the team’s trajectory alongside new captain Salman Agha. “No doubt strike rate is important in T20 cricket but you have to combine it with a volume of runs,” Hesson said. “There’s a good reason why our ranking in T20 cricket is as low as it is, because our strike rates from a batting point of view are not high enough. We certainly made some shifts in that last series to play a more expansive game of cricket and probably catch up with the rest of the world, as that is the way the modern game is.” “Babar is one of many who have the ability to make those improvements. And I’m here to work with them and help them. In the last month or so, he’s made some really good changes. It’s not just a matter of going from 125 to 150, it’s a matter of increasing what you can offer because we’re no doubt often 30-40 runs short with the bat. So, we need to find a way of getting that,” he added. Hesson, 50, has worked with Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Punjab Kings in the IPL, apart from holding several coaching roles since his early 20s.