A Virat Kohli Fan Exposes ‘Statpadder’ Babar Azam’s ODI Numbers – Babar Azam has a brilliant record in ODIs so far in his career. Hailed as the King of Pakistan cricket, Babar Azam made his ODI debut in 2015 and has been leading the side in the past three years.
The stylish right-hander who is Babar Azam has played 100 ODI innings, in which he’s scored 5142 runs at a terrific average of 58. Babar Azam has notched up 18 ODI centuries along with 27 ODI fifties.
Since the start of 2016, Babar Azam is the 4th leading ODI run-scorer. And since the start of 2019, he’s the second-highest run-scorer behind only Shai Hope, but Hope has a much lesser average of 52 than Babar’s 65! Virat Kohli is the third leading scorer since 2019 with an average of 49.
This also explains Babar Azam’s numero uno ranking in ICC ODI men’s batsmen rankings. The debate between the fans of Virat Kohli and Babar Azam continues to rage on as both batters have been exceptional in ODI cricket, which is undoubtedly both of their best format of the three formats.
One Virat Kohli fan on Twitter recently exposed the “statpadder” Babar Azam with three strong reasons:
This fan, @Melbourne__82, opined that Babar is not as a big match-winner as Kohli is because of a few factors.
First, he pointed out the latest knock of Babar Azam – a half-century – Babar scored 53 runs in 66 balls in a chase of 301 against Afghanistan on what was a good batting pitch in Hambantota. The Virat Kohli fan said that Babar Azam was “clearly Playing for himself” and the Pakistani skipper batted selfishly to protect his own runs and average while risking the result of the team.
Eventually, Pakistan did manage to scrape over the line with just one wicket in hand and in the last over, but it looked at one point that they could even lose the game.
As a captain, Babar Azam should have taken more responsibility to finish off the run-chase, something Virat Kohli has done on numerous occasions in his career. However, as many believe, Babar should have batted a bit more faster to not put pressure on the lower-order and keep the asking rate in touch.
The fan also opined that Babar “plays too many dot balls” to “just increase his average by statpadding on highways”.
Also, the fan pointed out that Babar Azam has scored only 53 runs in 2 knocks against Afghanistan in this series in Sri Lanka.
