Sports
‘King of cricket, brilliant performer’; Twitter overjoyed as Babar Azam crowned World. No 1
Pakistan’s skipper Babar Azam has been crowned World’s No 1 One Day International (ODI) batsman in International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings and twitterati seems to be the happiest.
Soon after the news broke out that the 26-year old Pakistan captain has toppled Indian captain Virat Kohli to become the top rated ODI batsman, #Babar Azam and #No.1 started trending on twitter with people sharing their sentiments.
Babar Azam is leading the chart with 865 points while Virat Kohli, who retained top slot since 2017, has 857 points. They are followed by India’s Rohit Sharma and England’s Ross taylor and Aaron Fince.
It is for the first time since 2003 that a Pakistani batsman has secures number one slot. Azam is the fourth Pakistan batsman to achieve the feat. Earlier, Mohammad Yousuf, Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas have remained on the top slot.
In order to cover five ratings points, Babar needed a score of 70 runs prior to the start of the third ODI between Pakistan and South Africa.
The captain managed to score 94 runs and his brilliant innings helped Pakistan defeat South Africa by 28 runs and the series by 2-1.
In the first ODI, he became the quickest batsman in the world to score 13 ODI centuries.
Babar’s ODI record has been remarkable with 3,808 runs and 13 centuries, the third most by a Pakistani batsman, at an average of 56.83 in 80 matches.
On the other hand, Pakistan’s opening batsman Fakhar Zaman has also entered the top 10 of ODI rankings and is ranked no 7 after his back-to-back centuries against South Africa in the last two ODIs of the series.