Babar Azam about to break Rohit Sharma’s record in T20Is: Babar Azam produced an exceptional T20I century and established a couple of remarkable records during his unbeaten 101 off 58 balls in the second T20I in Lahore in his 101st T20I to help Pakistan grab a 2-0 lead in their home five-match series against New Zealand.
Azam had struggled in the first T20I, as he was dismissed for only nine runs, but he came out firing in the second game, and his 174.14 strike rate helped him dominate the match.
In the 2nd match against the Kiwis, Pakistan won the toss and decided to bat first. Babar led his team to 192/4 in their 20 overs by hitting 11 fours and three sixes. In response, despite Mark Chapman’s unbeaten 65 off 40 balls, New Zealand was restricted to 154/7.
Babar Azam’s 58-ball century was his third T20I century. Interestingly, he is the only batter from Pakistan to hit more than one century in the format. Babar now ranks among the top hitters in terms of T20I tonnes with a hundred.
With four T20I hundreds, Rohit Sharma tops the chart, followed by five other batsmen, including Babar, who has three hundreds just since recently. Incidentally, Virat Kohli, who has 38 50+ T20I scores, leads the tally of most 50+ scores, followed by Babar and Rohit with 33.
| Player | Country | T20I hundreds | T20I fifties |
| Rohit Sharma | India | 4 | 29 |
| Babar Azam | Pakistan | 3 | 30 |
| Sabawoon Davizi | Czech Republic | 3 | 5 |
| Glenn Maxwell | Australia | 3 | 10 |
| Colin Munro | New Zealand | 3 | 11 |
| Suryakumar Yadav | India | 3 | 13 |
He is now tied for second place among players with the most T20I hundreds overall. He sits with two other players in the T20I format who have reached three tonnes: Colin Munro, and Suryakumar Yadav.
Babar has nine centuries overall in T20 cricket, six of which came while serving as captain in league cricket. Therefore, as a skipper in T20 cricket, he surpassed the records of five tonnes set by Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis. Michael Klinger of Australia, who has seven, sits in first.
He also equals the most T20I-winning captain record sharing 42 wins with Afghanistan’s Asghar Afghan.
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