Pakistan captain Babar Azam slammed an impressive century against England in the ongoing third ODI of the three-match series at Birmingham and in-process broke a world record held by the likes of South Africa’s Hashim Amla and India’s Virat Kohli.
Asked to bat first by England captain Ben Stokes, Pakistan put up a formidable 331/9 in 50 overs despite only three batsmen scoring the majority of runs. Imam-Ul-Haq made 56 in 73 balls and added 92 runs with Babar Azam for the second wicket.
After Imam fell, Mohammad Rizwan came to the crease and upped the ante of scoring runs, as he added 179 runs with Babar. Rizwan made 74 in 58 balls with 8 fours. However, the star of the innings remained the Pakistan captain who creamed off 158 in 139 balls, hitting 14 fours and 4 sixes in his innings.
For England, Brydon Carse picked 5/61 and Saqib Mahmood picked 3/60.
It was a brilliantly paced innings played by Babar, as he gradually bettered his strike-rate and played classical knock, and also showed some good hitting skills. However, notably, during his knock, Babar also became the fastest batter to reach the 14 ODI centuries milestone, breaking the record of the likes Meg Lanning (82 innings), Hashim Amla (82 innings), David Warner (98 innings), and Virat Kohli (103 innings).
The cricket fraternity was all praises for Babar Azam’s knock and reacted as such on Twitter.
Here are the tweets:
