There is not much cricket happening around the world. There is not much ‘anything’ happening anywhere, such are the unprecedented times we are living in!
The IPL has been postponed, England have taken the flight back from Sri Lanka, the India-South Africa series was called off after one match was washed out as was Australia-New Zealand after Sydney hosted a match in a spectator-less SCG.
But across our North-West border there is a cricket tournament underway and now in its final stages. Yes, Pakistan is hosting its premier T20 tournament – the Pakistan Super League (PSL) and is the only country which is somehow still managing to give the world some cricketing action!.
Karachi Kings finished second on the points table after 5 wins and 4 losses from 10 matches.
And the man whose contributions with the bat were largely responsible for their fortunes is Pakistan’s limited-overs’ superstar – Babar Azam.
Azam loves to score runs in the shorter formats – in Asia or away from home, in heat or in rain, in packed stadiums or the Coronavirus-hit empty stands – he has hammered heaps of runs in all conditions.
His batting average of 54.17 and 50.72 is second to Virat Kohli in both the formats – in ODI (min. 2000 runs) and T20I (min. 1000 runs) cricket history.
Azam scores big runs, tons of runs – he plays the role of the anchor and the accumulator and is the mainstay of Pakistan’s batting order.
The story was no different in the PSL.
Azam is the highest scorer of PSL 2020 (till the end of the Group Stages) with 345 runs in 9 innings at an average of 49.28 including 3 fifties. His strike rate of 123.65 is on the lower side but it also highlights the role he plays for Karachi – of the anchor and the pivot around whom the more dashing batsmen take more chances.
There is a difference of 61 runs between Azam and the second-highest scorer of the tournament, Chris Lynn and then the cluster gets tighter.
Azam has scored almost one-fourth (23.71%) of his team’s runs in PSL 2020. Again there is daylight between his contribution and the batsmen who follow in a cluster – Shan Masood (18.73%), Kamran Akmal (18.69%), Chris Lynn (17.84%) and Shoaib Malik (17.8%).
Azam was also very consistent with his performances with six 25-plus scores in the tournament. In 4 of these matches, he lost his opening partner Sharjeel Khan for a low-score within the powerplay, rescued Karachi and helped rebuild the innings.
A feature of his batting in the tournament has been the high number of boundaries (4s) he has hit – 43 in total – which is by far the maximum for PSL 2020.
Overall, Azam has aggregated 4861 runs in 138 T20 innings at an average of 43.01. He has scored 35.37 runs per innings in T20 cricket – the highest for any batsman in the format (min. 100 innings) leaving behind the likes of KL Rahul (34.54), Shaun Marsh (33.65), Chris Gayle (33.58) and Virat Kohli (33.46) who follow and complete the top 5.
The word ‘Babar’ means Lion in Persian. Azam has surely lived up to his first name, even in these testing times of COVID-19!
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