T20 World Cup 2024: Pakistan’s Men’s National Cricket Team skipper Babar Azam created a world record in his team’s final T20 World Cup 2024 Group A fixture against Ireland in Florida’s Lauderhill on Sunday as he surpassed former Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and became the player with the highest number of runs scored as a captain in the history of ICC T20 World Cups.
The 29 year old played an amazing unbeaten inning of 32 runs in 34 deliveries and this inning helped him go past Dhoni tally of 529 runs in the T20 World Cup’s history.
List of players who have scored the highest number of runs as a captain in T20 World Cups
1. Babar Azam – 549 runs in 17 innings
2. Mahendra Singh Dhoni – 529 runs in 29 innings
3. Kane Williamson – 527 runs in 19 innings
4. Mahela Jayawardene – 360 runs in 11 innings
5. Graeme Smith – 352 runs in 16 innings
It’s worth noting that Pakistan defeated Paul Stirling’s Ireland by a margin of three wickets in their final fixture of the 2024 T20 World Cup at Lauderhill’s Central Broward Regional Park Stadium on Sunday.
The low scoring thriller came to an end in the 19th over of the Pakistani inning as Shaheen Shah Afridi hit a maximum off the bowling of Gareth Delany and took his team over the line and helped the Shaheens end their below par T20 World Cup 2024 campaign on a positive note.
Chasing a target of 107 runs, the Green Shirts, despite getting off to a decent start with the bat, made things tough for themselves as they kept on losing – wickets at crucial intervals of the match. Both the openers, Mohammad Rizwan (17 runs in 16 balls) and Saim Ayub (17 runs in 17 balls) got dismissed in the first six overs of the Pakistani inning.
The middle order of the Babar Azam-led team failed to get going once again as the trio of Usman Khan (2 runs in 3 balls), Fakhar Zaman (5 runs in 9 balls), Imad Wasim (4 runs in 6 balls) and Shadab Khan (0 runs in 2 balls) got dismissed cheaply.
Bowling All-Rounder Abbas Afridi gave the Shaheens a much needed breakthrough as he smashed a huge six and a good looking four during his inning of 17 runs which helped his team get closer to chasing down the target of 107 runs.
Captain Babar Azam was the top scorer for the Green Shirts with his match winning inning of 32 runs while Shaheen Shah Afridi played a good supporting role with the bat as he scored 13 runs in five balls and also picked up three wickets for just 22 runs which helped him to become the man of the match as well.
Earlier in the game, a really dominating performance by the Pakistani bowling unit got the better of the entire Irish batting unit as the trio of Mohammad Amir, Imad Wasim and Shaheen Shah Afridi restricted the Paul Stirling-led team to a below par total of 106 runs.
