There is always a story behind people who are deemed world number one. Such stories are often loaded with tales of struggle, consistency, disappointments, and hard work in sports or any other field. The T20I and ODI number one batter, Babar Azam’s story is one such example.
“From a ball picker in a Test at the Gaddafi Stadium Lahore against South Africa in 2007 to reaching the ranks of Pakistan Test team and then taking charge of his country’s team as a captain is a giant leap indeed.” These are the words of acknowledgment for Babar Azam penned by Qamar Ahmed, a sports writer.
Azam’s rise in the ICC ODI rankings has been concurrent with his significant growth as a batsman in the last few years. Babar made his way up through age-group cricket. His journey began at an under-15 world championship in 2008 and he played two under-19 World Cups in 2010 and 2012, where he was Pakistan’s top run-scorer.
Babar had the distinction of top scoring regularly in age-group domestic cricket before he was called up to the national side in 2015 and made his debut during the home ODI series against Zimbabwe – a rarity because Azam’s rise was during Pakistan’s isolation as an international venue due to security concerns.
By the time the ICC Cricket World Cup rolled around in 2019, Pakistan knew they had a star in Babar. It was at the showpiece tournament that the rest of the world really caught on too. A 66-ball 63 in a surprise win for Pakistan against hosts England in his second match of the tournament had caught the eye.
However, they had all left fans wanting more. More of those gorgeous cover drives. More of that serenity at the crease. But most importantly, more runs. For the Babar who had so regularly turned starts into so much more to come out on the world stage.
Against New Zealand, he did just that, scoring his first-ever Cricket World Cup century as Pakistan got home with five balls to spare on a pitch that offered plenty to the bowlers. He went on to make history in that tournament, scoring 474 runs at 67.61 to break Javed Miandad’s 1992 record for the most runs by a Pakistan batsman in a Cricket World Cup campaign.
Nowadays, Babar’s place among ODI cricket’s finest players is unquestionable. An average of 59.18 and 16 centuries across just 84 matches will do that sort of thing. While the first couple of years of Test cricket didn’t bring the instantaneous success of white-ball cricket, steady improvements year on year have seen him rank among the best Test batsmen since the start of 2018, too.
A factor that helped the Pakistan batter take his career to the next level was a changed approach to his practice in the nets. In the initial stages of his career, Babar did not take practise sessions as seriously as he does now. In an interview, Babar admitted that a chat with Virat Kohli helped him understand how important nets are.
Another reason for his constant performance is that Azam practices with local Pakistani bowlers, who are famous for high speed and some good left arm and right arm spin bowler, as world know Pakistan in cricket for his bowling skills.
Several Pakistan players of this generation have seen regressions after a few years in the side, but Azam, mercifully for Pakistan, seems immune to even that malaise. He is, even with so much of his career still ahead of him, one of Pakistan’s best ever batsmen.
