Babar Azam, the captain of the Pakistani men’s cricket team, set a new benchmark by becoming the first Asian batsman to score 11,000 runs in an international competition. The 27-year-old right-handed hitter beat former Indian skipper Virat Kohli’s record by reaching the milestone in his 251st innings. It took the master of Indian hitting 261 innings to accomplish the milestone.
The feat was first accomplished by former great batsman Sunil Gavaskar in 262 innings, and then by Javed Miandad in 266 innings. On October 13, Babar Azam helped his team defeat Bangladesh in the sixth game of the ongoing Tri-series at Hagley Oval in Christchurch with a total of 55 runs from 40 balls and the loss of three wickets.
Babar Azam, The King with another Record
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Babar is the 11th Pakistani batsman to reach the milestone of 10,000 runs in international cricket, and he now has 11002 runs to his name. In 75 innings of 42 Tests, 4664 runs were scored, in 90 innings of 92 ODIs, and in 86 innings of 91 T20Is, he scored 3122 runs.
Mohammad Rizwan, who kept up his stellar form, and Babar Azam, who was in fine form against the Asian competitors, scored 101 runs for the first wicket. It was their eighth time combining for more than 100 runs in a T20I cricket match.
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Babar overtook Indian skipper Rohit Sharma to become the batter with the second-highest amount of the fifties in the game’s shortest format with his 29th fifty in 91 T20I games. The Indian captain, who also has the most runs scored in T20I history with 28, has four centuries to his credit and now has 29 of his own. In the elite ranking, he is just behind Virat. Virat, 33, has 33 half-centuries in T20 international games.