The entire Pakistan cricketing fraternity has always compared their star player Babar Azam with Virat Kohli. The Indian skipper has changed the history of batting hugely. He has set benchmarks with some unprecedented consistency.
In the last 4-5 years, the right-handed Indian batsman has scored heavily. As a result of his service he was awarded with top three honours at the International Cricket Council (ICC) awards. He is the first cricketer to bag those top three honours.
Kohli was named the Cricketer of the Year for the second successive time and as a result was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers trophy. Along with that he was named both the best Test and ODI Player of the Year.
In 2018 Kohli became the top run-scorer in both Tests and ODIs. He had played 13 Tests and scored 1322 runs with an average of 55.08. He scored 5 Test centuries and 5 half-centuries in 2018. In ODIs, he played 14 games and scored 1202 runs at an average of 133.55 with 6 centuries.
On the other hand Babar Azam is also showing some great promise and has created his own legacy. The 24-year-old, after making his ODI debut against the Windies, scored three consecutive centuries.
He became the fastest in terms of innings to cross the 1000-run mark in T20Is. In the process of doing so, he surpassed Kohli too. In ODIs he was joint fastest to cross 1000-run mark.
Azam shared that record with two all-time greats in the likes of Sir Viv Richards and Kevin Pietersen. He is just 24 years old but has more centuries at No. 3 than any other Pakistani batsmen ever.
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Babar plays down the comparison between him and Kohli
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The results show why Babar Azam is always compared with Virat Kohli. However recently Babar has himself turned down those comparisons.
Before the start of the upcoming Pakistan Super League, an interactive session was been conducted. In that session, Azam praised Kohli heavily and said that he has still a long way to go.
“Whenever you hear, people compare me with Virat Kohli. I think he is a very big player, I am not even close to him. I have just started while he has achieved a lot. Still I have to achieve and if I perform like that you can compare but not now,” he said.