Image: Babar Azam, 2018 (Pakistan Cricket / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)
Babar Azam: Pakistan’s Run Machine
Walk into any cricket ground in Pakistan and mention Babar Azam’s name, and you’ll get an opinion — usually a strong one. Some call him the most technically correct batter Pakistan has produced since Younis Khan. Others point to his numbers against genuinely fast bowling in testing conditions and wonder if the reputation slightly outruns the substance. What almost nobody disputes is the eye. Few players in the world time a cricket ball the way Babar does, and fewer still make batting look this unhurried while the scoreboard keeps moving.
He’s Pakistan’s most bankable batter of the last decade, a former captain across all three formats, and — depending on which week you ask — either the best number three in the world or a man whose white-ball dominance hasn’t always translated into the format that matters most to purists. Both things can be true at once, and that tension is part of what makes his career worth following closely.
Where it started: a watch shop in Lahore
Babar was born on 15 October 1994 in the Walled City of Lahore, into a family that didn’t have cricket money or cricket connections in the way some academy prospects do. His father ran a small watch repair shop. His mother kept the house. Nobody was grooming him for international cricket from age six with private coaches — the game came to him sideways, through his cousins.
Kamran and Umar Akmal, both of whom went on to play for Pakistan themselves, are his elder first cousins on his father’s side, and it was watching them that pulled Babar toward the sport. He was a ball boy at Gaddafi Stadium before he was anything else — literally chasing balls at the boundary rope of the ground where he’d later captain his country.
He joined a cricket academy, started grinding through domestic cricket, and played for outfits like Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited and Islamabad Leopards as an emerging player before moving into first-class cricket with the State Bank of Pakistan and Sui Southern Gas Company teams in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy.
The international start wasn’t smooth
Here’s something that often gets glossed over: Babar’s early Test career had a genuinely rough patch. On a tour where Pakistan got whitewashed 5-0, he managed scores of 0, 10, 8, 3, and 10 across five innings — 31 runs at an average of 6.2, his worst series to date at that point.
But the same tour told a different story in the shorter formats. In the T20I leg, he was Pakistan’s leading run scorer with 109 runs, including a 41, a 50 not out, and an 18. He kept climbing the T20I rankings after that, briefly becoming the world’s number one T20I batter — only the second man after Misbah-ul-Haq to reach that spot — before slipping to third. Then came a series against West Indies, touring Pakistan for the first time in thirteen years, where Babar destroyed any doubts with an unbeaten 97 in the second T20I, a Man of the Match performance, and a series haul of 165 runs at an average of 82.50 and a strike rate near 149.
Facing the best fast bowler of his era, and not blinking
One thing that gets cited constantly by people who rate Babar highly: his record against Dale Steyn early in his career. In a 2019 piece for ESPNcricinfo, the writer Osman Samiuddin dug into how Babar had handled Steyn — widely regarded as the best fast bowler of the 21st century — with a level of composure that most contemporary batters simply didn’t have against him.
That’s the technical core of what makes Babar Babar, if you want the short version: he doesn’t rush. Bowlers who rely on making batters commit early, who want you playing around your front pad before the ball’s actually arrived, tend to get frustrated against him. He waits.
Captaincy, the World Cup, and the years at the top
Babar was part of the Pakistan squad that won the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, arguably the country’s biggest white-ball achievement of the last two decades, and by 2019 he’d been named in Pakistan’s World Cup squad, with the ICC tagging him as one of five exciting new talents to watch that tournament. He was confirmed as Pakistan’s ODI and T20I captain in May 2020, and the Test captaincy followed not long after, when he replaced Azhar Ali.
Captaining Pakistan is not a job with a long shelf life historically, and Babar’s tenure had its share of scrutiny, particularly around tournament exits and the eternal Pakistani cricket debate over team selection and tactics. But through the noise, his own batting rarely dipped for long.
The numbers that actually matter
By late 2025, Babar had established himself as one of the most prolific ODI centurions Pakistan has ever had. In the second ODI of a home series against Sri Lanka in mid-November 2025, chasing a target of 289, Babar ended a long century drought — his first international hundred in more than two years — notching his 20th ODI century and equalling Saeed Anwar’s Pakistan record for the most ODI hundreds by any Pakistani batter.
A few months later, in February 2026, in the third T20I against Australia, he scored 50 off just 36 balls — and in doing so, passed Virat Kohli for the most fifties in T20 international history.
Style: what actually happens when he bats
Watch Babar for twenty minutes and a few things become obvious fast. He plays properly straight — the full face of the bat, minimal bottom hand through his cover drives, the kind of technique coaches use as a teaching model. At six feet, he’s tall enough by subcontinental batting standards to get above the bounce on flatter Asian pitches, which partly explains why he’s historically looked more comfortable there than in some seam-friendly conditions overseas.
He’s not an explosive six-hitter in the Rohit Sharma mould, and he’s never pretended to be. Bowlers can’t settle into a defensive length against him, because he’ll find the gap regardless.
Beyond the bat
Babar captains Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super League, and he’s played county cricket for Somerset in England. He’s the eldest of three siblings — Safeer, Faisal, and Fariya — and by most accounts a fairly private person off the field. He was conferred Pakistan’s third-highest civilian honour, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, in recognition of his cricketing achievements.
Where this leaves him
Babar Azam’s story so far is really a story about the gap between early struggle and sustained excellence, and about a batting technique so classical that it sometimes looks like it belongs to an earlier cricketing era, dropped into the chaos of modern white-ball cricket and somehow thriving anyway. What’s not really in question anymore is whether he belongs in that conversation at all. The ball boy from Gaddafi Stadium settled that a long time ago.
Quick facts
Full name: Mohammad Babar Azam | Born: 15 October 1994, Lahore | Role: Right-handed top-order batter | Major honours: 2017 ICC Champions Trophy winner, former Test/ODI/T20I captain of Pakistan, Sitara-i-Imtiaz recipient, most Pakistani ODI centuries (20, level with Saeed Anwar), most T20I fifties in history.
Frequently asked questions
How old is Babar Azam?
Born on 15 October 1994, Babar Azam is in his early thirties as of 2026.
Is Babar Azam still Pakistan’s captain?
He has served as captain across all three formats at different points; current captaincy arrangements should be checked against the latest team announcements.
What is Babar Azam’s biggest record?
Passing Virat Kohli for the most fifties in T20 international history, alongside 20 ODI centuries, level with Saeed Anwar’s Pakistan record.
Which PSL team does Babar Azam play for?
Peshawar Zalmi, whom he also captains.
Has Babar Azam won an ICC trophy?
Yes — he was part of the Pakistan squad that won the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy.
Related players
Shaheen Shah Afridi · Mohammad Rizwan · Shadab Khan · Browse more on our Players page
Researched and fact-checked against official league, federation and governing-body sources. Reviewed by Makhdoomzada Zaeem Muhammad, Founder & Editor, PinLivescore.