Pakistan captain Babar Azam is by far the best batter to have come out of the Asian country in a while. His dominance across all formats is well known, but it is his meteoric rise in T20 cricket, that saw him get into the spotlight at the beginning of his career. Known for his ability to score runs at will in cricket’s shortest format, Babar on Sunday beat the likes of Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli to reach a huge milestone. The stylish top order batsman scored an unbeaten 59 to help his team Central Punjab beat Southern Punjab by 7 wickets in the National T20 Cup, Pakistan’s premier domestic T20 tournament. While doing so, Babar became the fastest to score 7000 runs in men’s T20 cricket.

He reached the milestone in his 187th innings, which is 15 less than West Indies legend Chris Gayle, who earlier held the record of being the fastest batter to reach 7000 runs in T20s. Gayle had taken 192 innings to reach the landmark. Indian captain Virat Kohli has now been pushed to the third place in the list as he had taken 212 innings to reach the landmark. Kohli recently became the first Indian batsman to complete 10,000 runs in T20 cricket during the ongoing Indian Premier League.

Babar is the 30th batsman to get past the 7000-run mark in T20s and also the third Pakistani after Shoaib Malik and Mohammad Hafeez.

Promoted

He will be looking to be in best shape and form ahead of Pakistan’s blockbuster opening match in the ICC T20 World Cup against arch rivals India on October 24.

He is currently in the 10th position in the list of highest run-getters in men’s T20 internationals, having scored 2204 runs in 56 innings at an average of 46.89