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Babar Azam Joins Pakistani Greats In Elite Batting Club After Cameo vs South Africa

Aakash Saini

Babar Azam joins a league of several Pakistani greats [Source: @SalmanAsif2007/x]Babar Azam joins a league of several Pakistani greats [Source: @SalmanAsif2007/x]

Babar Azam scaled a significant batting milestone through his breezy 31-run cameo against South Africa at Centurion in the second T20I of the three-match series. The former Pakistani skipper faced just 20 deliveries in his top-order cameo, and dispatched three of them for regal boundaries and another one for a huge six.

Babar shared a fighting 87-run partnership with Saim Ayub to blaze Pakistan past the 100-run mark after the early dismissal of captain Mohammad Rizwan.

Babar Azam attains huge batting record for Pakistan

Babar Azam scored 31 runs from 20 balls during Pakistan’s second T20I of the three-match series against South Africa on December 13. Through the course of his knock, the 30-year-old cricketer completed 14,000 runs across all international formats. Becoming only the fifth Pakistani batter in history to attain the significant landmark, Babar joined an illustrious batting list.

Former captain Inzamam-ul-Haq remains Pakistan’s highest run-maker with over 20,000 runs. Here is a look at each of the five Pakistani cricketers with 14,000 or more runs in international cricket.

Batter
International runs
Inzamam-ul-Haq20,541
Younis Khan17,790
Mohammad Yousuf17,134
Javed Miandad16,213
Babar Azam14,029

Babar Azam has tallied 3,997 of those runs in 55 Test matches for Pakistan since his debut in October 2016. In 120 ODIs, the legendary right-handed batter has made 5,809 runs at a prolific batting average of 56.95. Meanwhile, in T20I cricket, Babar has drawn 4,223 runs from 128 games and is just nine runs shy of Rohit Sharma’s tally in becoming the highest run-aggregator in the format. He recently went past Virat Kohli’s haul of 4,188 runs, mere months after the T20I retirement of the Indian batting great.

Nonetheless, Babar Azam’s swift 31-run knock led Pakistan’s batting recovery after the early loss of captain Mohammad Rizwan to Ottneil Baartman. The match marks a must-win one for the ‘Men in Green’ in a bid to enforce a decider at Johannesburg on December 14.