Pakistan players had no idea to play against the hosts Australia in the two-match Test series as well as in the T20I series. Pakistan team was touring with the new captains in the Australian soil. Babar Azam was handed over the duty to lead the team in T20I side while Azhar Ali was the captain in Test series. Both the skippers were unsuccessful to lead the teams to the victory.
In the Test series, captain Azhar Ali showed no temperament to play the Test cricket and lost early wickets. In total, he scored 62 runs in four innings. Babar Azam was the third-highest run-scorer in two Test matches with 210 runs after David Warner (489) and Marnus Labuschagne (347).
Babar Azam, who is No.1 T20I and No.3 ODI batsman, has always been compared with Steve Smith and Virat Kohli. Earlier, former Australian cricketer, Ricky Ponting had opined that the best from Babar Azam is yet to come. The 25-year-old has played only 23 Test matches. In Brisbane, he showed a commendable performance and scored a century. Babar would have got his second century in the series if Mitchell Starc had not picked the wicket of him when he was just three runs away from his century.
Babar Azam believes that the Indian skipper and former Australian skipper have more experiences in Test cricket than him so he is not eligible to be compared with them.
“I don’t think the comparison is valid at this stage. I haven’t played much, while the other players have played quite a lot. I have only played 23 Tests and (74) ODIs,” Babar told cricket.com.au.
However, the right-hand batsman expressed that from the beginning of his journey, he wanted to be counted in the top 5 best batsmen in the cricket world. He believes that he can achieve his dream only after he remains consistent in his performance.
“When I started cricket, my goal was to compete with the best. I wanted to do well for my country and to be among the top five batsmen in the world. My mindset was to complete with the 4-5 best batsmen in the world. You can produce good performances, but to maintain consistency you need a lot of hard work,” he added.