Pakistan skipper Babar Azam shone with the bat in the 2nd T20I against New Zealand at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. He scored a brilliant hundred, his third in T20Is, helping the hosts post 192 runs on the board in their 20 overs. In reply, New Zealand could only muster 154 runs in their 20 overs and fell 38 runs in the game and 0–2 in the series. Haris Rauf was also the star bowler for Pakistan who hit his second successive four and returned with figures of 4/27.
Some of the records made/broken by Babar Azam are as follows:
Babar Azam scored his third century in T20 International. Only Rohit Sharma has more T20I hundreds (4) than him in the shortest format of the game.
Babar Azam scored his third T20 century as captain. These are the most for any player to lead the team in T20Is. He left behind Rohit Sharma who has two centuries as India’s T20 captain.
This was Babar Azam’s 9th century in T20 cricket. With this ton, he went past the likes of Michael Klinger, Aaron Finch and David Warner who all have 8 centuries in T20 cricket. Only Chris Gayle is ahead of Babar in this aspect with 22 centuries in the shortest format.
Babar Azam has now won 42 matches as Pakistan’s T20I captain. These are the joint most wins in the shortest format with Eoin Morgan and Asghar Afghan.
Speaking after the match, Babar Azam looked happy with his performance in the game and more importantly, that his team won. I am very happy with my performance in this match. There was a bit of help for the fast bowlers in the beginning but Rizwan and I saw through that period, built a partnership and then Iftikhar and I finished it off. We used the last five over and got a very good total.
“Losing wickets one after the other is a matter of concern and we will discuss these things, when you lose wickets in clusters it puts pressure on the batsmen. We have very good fast bowlers and they did brilliantly. He (Rizwan ) feeling better and there.” Tomorrow will be a rest day, let’s see how he performs.”