Pakistan skipper Babar Azam has ended Indian captain Virat Kohli’s three-year-long supremacy at the ICC One Day International (ODI) batting rankings in the latest ranking released by International Cricket Council (ICC).
Virat Kohli was at the top of the pile for an astonishing 1258 days in the 50-over format. Babar’s match-winning 82-ball 94 in the third ODI against South Africa helped him gain 13 rating points to reach a career-best 865 points, leading the Indian captain by 8 rating points.
With this, he also became the fourth Pakistani batsman to attain the top ranking after Zaheer Abbas (1983-84), Javed Miandad (1988-89), and Mohammad Yousuf (2003).
Not surprisingly, this has triggered a Kohli vs Azam debate among fans and cricket pundits. On the face of it, it may sound a bit of a stretch considering that the Indian captain has scored over 22,000 runs in his international cricket, while Azam has been able to garner 8000 runs combining all the formats but with his consistently great performances, one cannot unseen the fact that Azam is cut from the same cloth as Kohli.
While Virat Kohli is acknowledged as a record-breaking machine for India, the Pakistan skipper has been chasing the legend and interestingly has already often broken three records held by the Kohli.
Fastest to 13 ODI centuries
Babar has taken just 76 innings to score 13 tons while Kohli had taken 86 innings to score 13 ODI hundreds. He also succeeded South African batsman, Hashim Amla who had scored his 13th ODI hundred in just 83 innings.
Fastest to 1,000 runs in T20Is
Azam overtook Kohli and became the fastest batsman to achieve the remarkable feat of 1000 runs in the T20 format in just 26 matches in 2018. Kohli took 27 innings to cross the 1000-run mark. However, England batsman David Malan took the highest spot this year by smashing 1000 runs in just 24 T20I innings.
2nd fastest to 3000 ODI runs
Azam surpassed Kohli and became the second-fastest to get 3,000 runs in ODIs in 68 innings. It took 75 innings for Virat to complete 3000 ODI. South Africa’s Hashim Amla tops the list who did it in 57 innings.
