Azam makes beeline for record books

Youngster finds himself in lofty company after scoring three centuries in three games

KARACHI: Pakistan’s whitewash win against a largely off-colour West Indies team included many important contributions and performances but batsman Babar Azam remained head and shoulders above both his teammates and opponents with a record-breaking show.

The 21-year-old notched his first ODI century in the first game of the series at Sharjah and by the time the three-match series concluded in Abu Dhabi, he had added two more hundreds with almost effortless ease.

Azam’s sublime batting performance catapulted him into the record books as he not only broke the record for most runs in a three-match ODI series — 360 in three innings — but also became only the third batsman from Pakistan to score three consecutive centuries, while also being the second-youngest.





Azam started the ODI series with a 120-run knock off 131 balls; then scored 123 off 126 balls to surpass his that effort in the second game last Sunday before a masterful 117 off 106 balls at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Stadium laid the foundations of a thumping 136-run win on Wednesday.

Azam overtook South African Quinton De Kock, who had scored 342 runs against India in the December 2013 series at home.

Azam is also in good company when it comes to compatriots with three consecutive centuries, sharing that achievement with batting greats Zaheer Abbas and Saeed Anwar — Zaheer against India in 1982-83 and Anwar in a 1993 tri-series at Sharjah that featured West Indies and Sri Lanka besides Pakistan.

Azam, who made his 50-over debut against Zimbabwe at Lahore last year, was widely rated as one of Pakistan’s most promising talents and has taken to international cricket like a duck to water, having scored a fifty on debut.



The right-hander has gone from strength to strength since then — his unbeaten 62 against England at Abu Dhabi last year was his first match-winning contribution against a leading team while he also scored 62 and 83 in the two games against New Zealand earlier in the year.

At present Azam is the only specialist Pakistani batsman to average more than 50 in the ODI format — although he has only made 18 appearances in the format —  and averages 52.11 coupled with an impressive strike-rate of 93.55.

Meanwhile Azam has another world record in sight; if he makes 114 more runs in his next two ODIs, he would break Sir Viv Richards’ long-standing record of being the fastest to reach 1,000 runs. The West Indies great reached that mark in 21 innings while Babar currently has 886 runs in 18 knocks.



The Pakistan record to 1,000 runs is currently held by skipper Azhar Ali, who took 23 matches to reach the figure.

Azam already has the most runs for a Pakistani batsman after 18 games and is likely to at least break Azhar’s if not Richards’ record when the Men in Green return to the ODI format in a five-match series against Australia in their own backyard early next year.

Another century then will also see him equal record of four consecutive centuries, which the Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara achieved during the 2015 World Cup.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2016.

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