An elegant batter that became the face of Pakistan cricket, Babar Azam, is the latest in a line of cricketing leaders in his country. While he is no longer the captain, he is still the face of the team and its most popular player. And while the Pakistan Cricket Team has not done too well on the international stage in the past decade, Babar has emerged as one of the best cricketers of his generation.
With the stats to back his stature in modern cricket, many have compared Babar Azam to some of the greatest batters of the 21st century, like Virat Kohli and Steve Smith. And while Azam might not be on the level of those all-time greats, he is still one of the finest Asian cricketers of the past decade.
Babar Azam Stats
Babar Azam Stats: Bowling
| Format | Matches | Ins. | Runs | B.F. | H.S. | Avg. | S/R | N.O. | 4s | 6s | 50s | 100s | 200s |
| Tests | 59 | 108 | 4235 | 7788 | 196 | 42.77 | 54.37 | 09 | 494 | 23 | 29 | 09 | 00 |
| ODIs | 131 | 128 | 6235 | 7089 | 158 | 55.17 | 87.95 | 15 | 574 | 67 | 37 | 19 | 00 |
| T20Is | 128 | 121 | 4223 | 3268 | 122 | 39.83 | 129.22 | 15 | 447 | 73 | 36 | 03 | 00 |
| PSL | 100 | 97 | 3,789 | 2,976 | 115 | 45.1 | 127.3 | 13 | 419 | 65 | 36 | 02 | 00 |
Babar Azam Batting Stats
| Format | Matches | Ins. | Balls | Wics. | Runs | B.Fig | Avg. | Econ. | S/R | 4w | 5w | 10w |
| Tests | 59 | 08 | 90 | 02 | 42 | 1/1 | 21.00 | 2.80 | 45.00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| ODIs | 131 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | – | – | – | – | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| T20Is | 128 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | – | – | – | – | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| PSL | 100 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | – | – | – | – | 00 | 00 | 00 |
Babar Azam Stats: Fielding
| Format | Matches | Catches |
| Tests | 59 | 47 |
| ODIs | 131 | 56 |
| T20Is | 128 | 52 |
| PSL | 100 | 52 |
Babar Azam Career Overview
Babar Azam was born on October 15, 1994, in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, making him 30 years old. He is a first cousin of the Akmal Brothers, of whom Kamran and Umar have played for the Pakistan Cricket Team. He started playing junior domestic cricket at a young age, eventually representing his city and province at different levels of the sport. He would also go on to play U-19 cricket for Pakistan.
Babar made his national team debut in May 2015 against Zimbabwe in an ODI series, even scoring a half-century in the third match of that series. Some impressive performances in ODIs for a year finally resulted in him being picked for the tour to England in the summer of 2016, where he made his T20I debut.
That same year, he played for Islamabad United in the inaugural season of the Pakistan Super League. In a year after that, he would also play in the Bangladesh Premier League and the Caribbean Premier League, becoming a known face in the global franchise cricket circuit.
After making his Test debut against the West Indies in late 2016, in 2017, he became the joint-fastest player to score 1000 runs in ODIs and was part of the triumphant ICC Champions Trophy 2017 squad.
By the time 2019 rolled around, Babar had become one of the leaders of the Pakistan Cricket Team. That very year, he was also picked to play in the Vitality T20 Blast in England, where he played for Somerset. In late 2019. While Pakistan flamed out in the 2019 ODI World Cup, in September of that year, Azam became the vice-captain of the national team, eventually becoming the captain in January 2020.
By this time, Babar Azam had become the face of Pakistan cricket and a truly world-class all-format player. However, his primary format was ODI, in which he became the world No. 1 in April 2021.
That very year, he captained the Men in Green to their first win over India in a World Cup, a 10-wicket triumph over Virat Kohli’s Men in Blue in the 2021 T20 World Cup. Pakistan crashed out of that competition in the semi-finals. They would then make it to the finals of the T20 World Cup in 2022 but lose to England.
In recent years, Babar’s form in formats other than ODI has dipped, especially in Test cricket. He has also lost the captaincy of the Pakistan cricket team but remains an integral part of the squad. He has several scoring records to his name, including the most half-centuries in T20Is and being the fastest Asian to score 11,000 runs in international cricket.
Currently, while being one of the tentpoles of the national team, Babar Azam plays for Peshawar Zalmi in the PSL, Central Punjab in domestic cricket, and has played in franchise leagues all over the world.
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