Star Pakistani cricketer Babar Azam recently broke his long-running drought in One Day International cricket in the second ODI of the series against Sri Lanka. He scored his century after a long gap of 83 innings; However, the veteran is yet to break the shackles in the shortest format of the game.
Pakistan recently hosted South Africa for a lengthy tour, consisting of two Test matches and three white-ball matches in both formats of the game. This tour also marked the return of Babar Azam to the shortest format of the game. However, the great batsman did not have a good start after being eliminated from the Asia Cup.
Currently, they are hosting two teams for a triangular series in the shortest format of the game. Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe were the two teams that agreed to travel to Pakistan for the series, while the initial participants, Afghanistan, withdrew after a series of diplomatic and political tensions.
Babar Azam is close to unwanted heights for Pakistan in T20 cricket
Legendary Pakistani batsman Babar Azam has been a stalwart for Pakistan in the shortest format of the game since his debut. Under his leadership, Pakistan reached great heights and then also reached very low levels. Overall, the batsman’s career has been full of ups and downs.
Playing against Zimbabwe in the opening match of the tri-series at the same venue in Rawalpindi where Babar Azam scored his ODI century last week, the veteran Pakistani was out for a duck with three balls to spare.
After a slow start, Pakistan team’s Babar, who came to chase the total score of 148 runs, faced three balls of Brad Evans and was sent back in the same over of Shahibzada Farhan. This is the ninth wicket of his T20I career, and the second highest wicket by any Pakistani batsman.
Most wickets for PAK in T20Is:
10-Saim Ayub
10- Umar Akmal
9 – Babar Azam*
8- Shahid Afridi
Babar Azam’s successful innings came against Sri Lanka in Rawalpindi
Babar has recorded three zeroes in his last six batting innings in the shortest format of international cricket. Following a series of inconsistent performances from Babar and his dreadful exit from the group stages of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 following the defeat against the United States, he was dropped from the T20I squad and removed from the captaincy.
Salman Aga was made the new captain of the team and under his leadership, the Pakistan team with relatively new players made it to the Asia Cup final despite losing all three of their matches to India.
Babar returned to international cricket in the South Africa series. The batsman could not perform well throughout the ODI as well as the T20 series, until the last T20 match at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, where he finally broke the shackles and played a match-winning inning of 68 runs off just 47 balls.
Will Pakistan consider playing the ICC T20 World Cup without this legend?
Pakistan had made a group stage exit from the last ICC T20 World Cup, with players like Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan missing. Since then, both of them have been out of the team, with only Babar Azam returning recently.
Babar recently became the highest run-scorer in T20, surpassing former Indian opener Rohit Sharma. The ICC T20 World Cup will be played in India and Sri Lanka next year and to make the squad for the World Cup, the Pakistan great will have to show some form in the tri-series and a possible tour of Sri Lanka.
Also read: Sikandar Raza, sitting on Pakistani soil, destroyed Pakistan’s agenda related to India.
