Babar Azam refuses to be compared with Virat Kohli

In the last three years, Virat Kohli has broken records at will and earned plaudits from all quarters of the cricketing world. Currently, the Indian captain is the only batsman in the world to be in the top five of the ICC rankings in all three formats. 

Similarly, Babar Azam, in his short international career, has made the cricketing world take notice of him, with his strong penchant for run-scoring. But, Azam, modestly, played down the talk surrounding his comparison with Kohli saying that they are completely different players.

He said, “I am different and Kohli is different. My focus is on delivering for Pakistan and that’s my main objective.”

Despite showing improved performance in Test cricket, Pakistan have been in a downhill spiral in ODIs - finding themselves on the brink of playing in the qualifier in order to participate in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. The team are currently placed at eighth in the One-day rankings. As such, Azam said that the team is focused on improving rankings in the limited-over format.

“The team’s atmosphere was and still is very good,” he said. “Meanwhile, as a team, our focus is to improve our rankings in the ODI format, where we are number eight.”