Pakistan captain Babar Azam broke a couple of impressive records during his unbeaten 101 off 58 balls in the second T20I against New Zealand at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Saturday, April 15.
Pakistan won the toss and opted to bat first in the game against the Kiwis. Babar struck 11 fours and three sixes to guide his team to 192/4 in their 20 overs. In response, New Zealand were held to 154/7 despite Mark Chapman’s unbeaten 65 off 40 balls.
Babar reached his ton, his third in T20Is, off the last ball of Pakistan’s innings with a four off Jimmy Neesham over cover. With his third hundred in T20Is, the Pakistan batter broke Rohit Sharma’s record for most hundreds in the format as captain.
Overall, he is now joint-second on the list of players with the most T20I hundreds. Glenn Maxwell, Colin Munro, and Suryakumar Yadav have three T20I tons – a list led by Indian captain Rohit (four).
In overall T20 cricket, Babar now has nine centuries, with six of those coming as captain. He thus broke Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis’ records of five tons in T20 cricket as a leader. Australia’s Michael Klinger (seven) tops the list.
Also, with nine T20 tons, Babar is now only behind West Indies legend Chris Gayle (22) on the illustrious list of batters with the most number of T20 centuries. The Aussie duo of David Warner and Aaron Finch have eight T20 tons each.
“Very happy with my performance” – Babar Azam
Speaking after being named Player of the Match, Pakistan captain Babar said that he was very pleased with his efforts and commented:
“I am very happy with my performance in this match. There was a bit of help for the fast bowlers early on but (Mohammad) Rizwan and myself saw that period through, built a partnership and then Iftikhar and myself finished it off. We utilized the last five overs and got to a very good total.
“Losing wickets back to back is a concern and we will discuss these things, it does put pressure on the batters when you lose wickets in clusters. We have very good fast bowlers and they performed brilliantly.”
The third Pakistan-New Zealand T20I will be played at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Monday, April 17.