Pakistan cricket captain Babar Azam has made the country proud once again by setting yet another record.
According to ESPN Cricinfo, since the start of 2019, Azam has scored the highest number of runs in men’s T20Is as well as in T20s.
The batsman has scored 1,004 runs in T20Is since 2019 in 26 innings. His highest score was 122 runs, while he scored 10 half-centuries during this time, followed by India’s Virat Kohli who scored 992 runs in 24 innings with the highest score of 94 runs.
Ireland’s Paul Stirling is in third place with 943 runs, which he scored in 26 innings. His highest score was 95, while he also scored 10 half-centuries like Azam and Kohli.
Azam also holds the credit of scoring a whopping 3,461 runs in T20s.
Per the report, the 26-year-old batsman has an average of 41.33 and 49.44 in the two formats, respectively. In comparison to Azam, only India’s Virat Kohli and England’s Dawid Malan have greater averages in T20Is. Meanwhile, only Aussie batsman David Warner is ahead of the Pakistani skipper in terms of averages in T20s.
Babar Azam the T20 batter often faces criticism for the role he plays and his strike rate, but let’s lay down some basic facts: Since the start of 2019, he has scored the most runs in T20Is (1004) as well as in T20s (3461) in the world. He averages 41.33 and 49.44 in the two formats respectively. With a minimum cut-off of 2000 runs, only Virat Kohli and Dawid Malan average more than Azam in T20Is and only David Warner is ahead in T20s.
Averages and runs scored are perhaps not the best metrics to measure a player’s worth in this format. Is strike rate better? Out of the 18 players who have scored 2000 runs, Azam has scored slower than just seven. Three of those – Glenn Maxwell, Kieron Pollard and AB de Villiers – are finishers and T20 greats.
The two openers with better strike rates than Azam’s 137.23 are Alex Hales and Chris Lynn, but both average slightly above 30. Azam has scored faster than the likes of Kohli, KL Rahul, Warner, Aaron Finch, Malan and Shikhar Dhawan. Azam also tops the charts in 50-plus scores, with 34 such scores in just 83 innings. This means that if you have Azam in your team, he will most likely score 50 runs off around 37 balls every second match he bats.
The role of top-three batters in a T20 side like Pakistan is often questioned without acknowledging how much it is a function of the team’s power-hitting capabilities in the middle and lower-middle order. Malan – the top ranked T20I batter – does not find himself in the crosshairs of critics as often as Azam because England can afford his scoring rate. At the Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kohli’s scoring rate in the first leg of IPL 2021 didn’t attract much attention because he had de Villiers and Maxwell to follow. Azam, unfortunately, doesn’t always enjoy that luxury.
But three games in the first half of this year’s disrupted PSL illustrated the impact he can have, depending on the batting quality around him. Against the Islamabad United, Azam made 62 off 54 balls in a team score of
196. The match run rate was close to 9.8 runs per over, Azam scored at just over 6.5 and his side lost.
In the very next game, the Multan Sultans set the Karachi Kings a target of 196 and Azam scored an unbeaten
60-ball 90 to take his team through with seven balls to spare. The last game was another high-scoring chase
against the Peshawar Zalmi, in which Azam scored an unbeaten 77 runs from 47 deliveries and helped chase down 188.
Each time, while Azam was protecting his wicket and batting through, batters around him, such as Mohammad Nabi, Joe Clarke and Sharjeel Khan, were outscoring him and making up for his lack of power-hitting. Even though he lost the first of those games, Azam seldom enjoys the luxury of that kind of batting around him when playing for Pakistan. Since January 2019, from positions four onwards, Pakistan average 18.27 runs per dismissal at a strike rate of 122.8. This is the worst among the top-ten T20I teams. Increasingly, however, there is a realisation that the role of anchors like Azam, Rahul and Kohli – who look to bat through their team’s innings – should be fluid.
Anchors are currently seen as the “hedges” in line-ups. If they bat through, the team is likely to post a par total. If they are dismissed early, teams have been known to fold quickly, so the anchors are a hedge against those collapses. In that perspective, as power-hitting scales new heights every year, anchors are even seen as deadweights. But not only does this overlook the difference in pitches around the world, it also overlooks the different nuances of an anchor in setting up totals or chasing them down.