Another milestone was achieved by the Pakistani Skipper Babar Azam despite not being in good form. Playing the third test match of the test series against England on the third day, green army skipper Babar Azam scored 54 runs. By adding these 54 runs to his career, he became the first skipper batter of Pakistan to score 1000+ runs in a calendar year and also surpassed former Pakistani skipper Inzamam-Ul-Haq who scored 999 in a test match in 2005.
Many of Pakistan’s cricketers became the Green Army captain after 2005, and this is the first time anyone has achieved this milestone. Babar scored 1009 runs in 2022 with the help of four centuries and six fifties. However, Babar became the 4th player after Joe Root, Usman Khawaja, and Jonny Bairstow to score 1000+ runs in test cricket in a calendar year. Babar is also the 6th player to score 1000+ runs for Pakistan in a calendar year after Mohsin Khan (1982), Inzamam-Ul-Haq (2000), Mohammad Yousuf (2006), Younis Khan (2006 and 2014), and Azhar Ali in 2016.
With this number of runs, Babar joined the elite list with Brain Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, and even the modern-day superstar player Virat Kohli. Virat has scored 1000+ test runs three times in his career (in 2016,17,18); along with him, Ricky is the only player to achieve this milestone thrice.
This year is phenomenal for the Pakistan skipper, who scored his career-best 196 runs against Australia in Karachi in his second test this year. Even his performance on tour to Sri Lanka was marvelous, and then the Pakistani team hasn’t played any test matches from July to December due to Asia Cup 2022 and T20 World Cup. Meanwhile, as the test cricket back in December, Babar once again showed his class against England in the first test match, scoring 136 runs again in Multan and Karachi. His performance was so good even though Pakistan hasn’t won any clash, and now they are standing on the crease of being a clean sweep in the home.
