Former Pakistan skipper Misbah-ul-Haq has shared his thoughts on the comparison between Indian superstar Virat Kohli and Pakistan captain Babar Azam.
Although there is a vast difference between Kohli’s and Babar’s career graphs, the pair has been compared several times. Some reckon Kohli is the modern-day great, while others rate Babar as the top-of-the-line batter. The biggest reason fans like to talk about Babar in the same breath as Kohli is his supreme consistency with the bat.
Notably, Babar recently won the ICC men’s cricketer of the year and the ODI player for the year award of 2022. He got the recognition on the back of 2600 runs scored across all three formats. Babar also took Pakistan into the Asia Cup and T20 World Cup finals, where the Men in Green faced defeats from Sri Lanka and England, respectively.
It was also Babar’s second-consecutive ODI player of the year award, and with that, he matched Kohli’s feat, who accomplished the accolades in 2017-18. Babar’s consistency across the formats has led many to draw his comparisons with Kohli, and Misbah also gave his views but reckoned it’s too early to compare the two. Misbah opined that Babar has just started playing the game while Kohli has already established himself as the great batter.
“There shouldn’t be a comparison between the two. Kohli has played a lot of cricket, and Babar is just starting. When Babar will play the same amount of cricket, then you can make a comparison. Kohli has played more cricket, and no one can match him at the moment. Yes, Babar is a class player, and he might achieve the same things as Kohli in the future, but at the moment, a comparison between the two doesn’t make sense because it’s just a start for Babar,” Misbah said in a video posted by paktv. tv.
For the unversed, Kohli has some staggering numbers to his name in all three formats. The right-handed batter has scored 8119 runs in 104 Tests, 12809 runs in 271 ODIs and 4008 runs in 115 games of the shortest format. He has 27 tons in the longest format, 46 centuries in ODIs and one hundred in T20Is.
