Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has said that Pakistan’s star batsman Babar Azam would soon become the no.1 ranked batter in the longest format as his batting has all the ingredients to become successful in all conditions.
Currently, Babar Azam is no.9 in ICC Men’s Test batting ranking. Making his test debut in 2016, Babar Azam has played 37 Test matches and scored 2461 runs with an average of 43.17 which included 5 Test hundreds.
Babar Azam has been named ICC Men’s ODI Player of the Year
“He (Babar Azam) has been great in T20I cricket in the past as well, hasn’t he? His white-ball cricket has been nothing short of breathtakingly good for the last four-five years. He’s the same as Shaheen.
“I don’t get to see a lot of these guys outside of when they tour Australia, but when I saw Babar in the second innings in Brisbane in the first Test against Australia, some of the shots that I saw him play on a fast bouncy Brisbane pitch – both on the front and back foot – against Hazlewood, Starc, and Cummins – it was like, I have heard a lot about him and I have seen a fair bit of his while-ball stuff, but this guy is the real deal,” Ricky Ponting spoke on ICC’s Review Show.
Babar scored a hundred at Brisbane in the last Australia tour 2019. He also played a knock of 97 in Adelaide against a high-quality Australia attack.
“I think I said then that for this guy, the sky is the limit. It’s only a matter of time I felt before he was going to be either the No.1-ranked Test batter in the world or certainly challenging for it.
“He’s probably challenging for that position right now and probably if he had played a few more Test matches through the last couple of years he’d be knocking the door down for that,” he added.
Last month he was named ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the year in the ICC awards as he scored 405 runs in 6 ODIs in the year 2021 which included 2 hundreds.
Ponting also pointed out that Babar has a good back-foot game as well to succeed in bouncy pitches like in Australia.
“He’s a beautiful player, simple as that. The thing I always look for with these younger type of batters is if they can play well off the back foot in Australia, and particularly through the off-side with a straight bat – which is probably an area that Joe Root hasn’t quite got on top of just yet and why he hasn’t made those big scores in Australia.
“Babar did that and hit on the front foot back down the ground as well. These are just things that I look for as markers and indicators in touring batters when they come to Australia and Babar he ticked both those boxes,” Babar Azam said.
Australia is set to travel to Pakistan for a full-fledged series consisting of 3 Tests, 3 ODIs, and one T20I in March-April.
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