Pakistan national cricket team’s superstar batsman Babar Azam has equaled a great T20I record of Indian national cricket team’s great batsman Virat Kohli.
Babar Azam achieved a sensational feat in the fourth match of the tri-nation series against the Zimbabwe national cricket team at the Rawalpindi Stadium on Sunday, November 23.
Babar Azam scored a half-century against Zimbabwe
After a disappointing Asia Cup 2025 performance, Pakistan head coach Mike Hesson decided to make some changes to the T20I setup and recalled talented batsman Babar Azam to the squad.
Babar resumed his T20I career and soon surpassed Rohit Sharma to become the highest run-scorer in the history of T20I cricket.
However, he started the tri-series against Zimbabwe with a duck and followed it up with a score of 16 against the Sri Lanka national cricket team.
Then, finally, in the second match against Chevron, Babar showed some form and scored a good half-century. He finished his innings with a score of 74 runs on 52 balls and his innings included 7 fours and 2 sixes.
This performance helped Babar Azam reach 38 half-centuries in T20I cricket, which is the joint-most in this format with Virat Kohli.
Most T20I fifties:
| Babar Azam (PAK) | 134 | 4374 | 39.76 | 128.38 | 3 | 38 | 41 |
| V Kohli (IND) | 125 | 4188 | 48.69 | 137.04 | 1 | 38 | 39 |
| RG Sharma (IND) | 159 | 4231 | 32.05 | 140.89 | 5 | 32 | 37 |
| Mohammad Rizwan (PAK) | 106 | 3414 | 47.41 | 125.37 | 1 | 30 | 31 |
| DA Warner (Australia) | 110 | 3277 | 33.43 | 142.47 | 1 | 28 | 29 |
| Jesse Butler (England) | 144 | 3869 | 35.49 | 148.97 | 1 | 28 | 29 |
We are playing good cricket- Salman Aga
Earlier, after winning the toss, Pakistan captain Salman Aga said that they are playing good cricket and want to continue like that. He said:
“We are going to bat first. I think it is still a good wicket to bat on so we want to change the trend and challenge ourselves by batting first because we are chasing a lot of targets. We are playing good cricket. It was a perfect game (against Sri Lanka). We want to take it day by day. I just want to perform well, it does not matter if it is my birthday or not.”
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe captain Sikandar Raza said their aim is to derail every team in the ongoing series. He said:
“We came into this series looking to derail every team. We played well against Pakistan and the result went in our favor in the next game. I wanted to bowl first because we were batting first and my toss record is quite bad (smiles). A change because we wanted to give everyone a chance. Wellington Masakadza has been selected in place of Graeme Cremer.”
Also read: Marco Johnson breaks the record of Viv Richards, Matthew Hayden hitting brilliant sixes on Indian soil.
Zimbabwe (Playing XI): Brian Bennett, Tadivanashe Marumani, Brendan Taylor (wk), Sikandar Raza (captain), Ryan Burl, Tony Munyonga, Tashinga Musekiwa, Brad Evans, Tinotenda Maphosa, Richard Ngarwa, Wellington Masakadza.
Pakistan (Playing XI): Sahibzada Farhan, Saim Ayub, Babar Azam, Salman Aga (capt), Usman Khan (w), Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Mohammad Wasim Jr, Naseem Shah, Usman Tariq.