Two awards in one day for Babar Azam: After the best ODI cricketer, the award of Cricketer of the Year is also in the name of the Pakistani captain.
Not only is the leadership of Babar Azam, the captain of the cricket team in Pakistan, under discussion for some time now, but he is also being subjected to constant criticism from some quarters.
However, during the last few days, in the annual awards of the International Cricket Council, the name that has emerged from all is that of Babar Azam.
First, the ICC handed him the captaincy of the ODI team of 2022, and on Thursday, he won the ODI Cricketer of the Year and then the biggest award, the overall best player across all formats, the ICC Cricketer of the Day. Air rights have been declared.
Babar is the only Pakistani cricketer to win the ODI Cricketer of the Year award while this is the second year in a row that a Pakistani player has won the ICC Cricketer of the Year award. Last year, this honor came in the share of fast bowler Shaheen Afridi.
Babar was competing against England’s Ben Stokes, Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza and New Zealand’s Tim Saudi for the Cricketer of the Year award.
According to the ICC, in 2022, Babar was the only batsman to score more than 2,000 runs in all formats and his number of centuries in the calendar year was eight, while the number of half-centuries was 17.
In 2022, Babar played two match-winning innings while enthralling everyone with his enthralling shots, CCI said in a statement on Thursday. He has been given the title of Best ODI Cricketer for the second time in a row. Remember that he won this award in 2021 as well.
This has happened only for the fourth time in the history of cricket and thus Babar has included himself in the ranks of Virat Kohli, A B Dilliers and M A S Dhoni.
In 2022, Babar was competing against Adam Zimpa of Australia, Sikandar Raza of Zimbabwe and Shay Hope of the West Indies, in which the ICC Panel and Voting Academy declared him the winner.
Babar’s journey to become ICC’s best cricketer for the second time
Babar has scored 679 runs in just nine ODIs at an average of 84.87 and three centuries and is currently the best batsman in ODIs.
The 28-year-old Pakistan skipper also scored five half-centuries throughout the year and has proved to be the backbone of the team’s batting.
Apart from personal achievements in terms of one-day matches, Babar Azam has also captained Pakistan in a good way. They have lost only one ODI (against Australia) in the whole year.
The ICC wrote that ‘Babar was an easy choice for the best ODI cricketer of 2022’.
The Cricket Council says that Babar’s best performance came in 2022 when he scored 114 against Australia at his home ground in Lahore in late March.
’ It was a must win match for Pakistan as they had lost against a good Australian team in the first match of the series. Babar showed his performance when the team needed him the most.
In that match, Pakistan successfully chased down a mammoth target of 349 runs. It was one of the best run chases by Pakistan in which the team lost only four wickets.
After an opening partnership of 118 runs between Fakhr Zaman and Imam Al-Haq in the second innings, Babar carried the rest of the burden on his shoulders.
When Babar reached the crease, Pakistan needed 231 runs from 187 balls. He completed his fastest century in 73 balls and was present at the crease till the 45th over.
He was also declared the best player of the match.
Keep in mind that Babar Azam is currently in the first five players in the rankings of the best batsmen in all three Tests, ODIs and T-Twenties.
The ICC has included Babar Azam as captain in the Men’s ODI Team of the Year. Test failures aside, but Babar has led the Pakistani ODI team to win all three series as captain.
He is the only player after Virat Kohli to have made it to the ICC ODI, Test and T20I teams of the year.
India’s aggressive batsman সুরিয়া কামার যাদিয়া has been adjudged the best T20I cricketer.
‘No Pakistani had received this award before King Babar’
Babar Azam’s fans and fellow cricketers are congratulating him for this award on social media.
As all-rounder Shadab Khan says that he is ‘no doubt the best ODI player ever.’
Former spinner Saeed Ajmal said that Babar deserves this award.
While cricket analyst Mazhar Arshad says that ‘no Pakistani cricketer had won this award before Babar. He is a great ODI player.
Keep in mind that ICC started giving these awards from the year 2004. In 2021, Shaheen Shah Afridi was declared the best cricketer of the year.
