Pakistan’s star batter Mohammad Rizwan has retained the top spot in the latest ICC Men's Player rankings for T20Is after his brilliant performance in the ongoing seven-match series against England.
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The ICC on Thursday released the latest rankings in which Pakistan skipper Babar Azam moved up one place to the third spot in the ICC batting chart, thanks to the second ton of his T20 career.
Mohammad Rizwan played an anchor role in the fifth T20 in Lahore where he scored 63 off 46 balls, taking Pakistan to a fighting score.
And with his half-century, Rizwan has become the world’s first batter to have scored the most runs in bilateral T20I series.
So far, Rizwan has scored 315 runs in five matches of the seven-match series against England, and he has yet to play the remaining two matches whereas Babar Azam has scored 194 runs in his last 5 innings.
It’s been a long debate whether Babar Azam should be deemed as one of the Fab Fours in world cricket. Rightly so. Ever since he made his debut seven years ago, the right-hander has emerged as one of the most prolific run-scorers for Pakistan if not in the world.
Having spent more than 1000 days on top of the ICC’s rankings for T20I batters, it’s easy to perceive that Babar Azam is the very best in the shortest format despite not being an out-and-out power hitter.
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However, recently, his teammate Mohammad Rizwan dethroned him from the top of the rankings. Rizwan attained his highest rating point of 861 on September 25. In fact, he is 80 points ahead of second-placed Suryakumar Yadav, who has a T20I average and strike-rate of 39.04 and 173.35 respectively.
The pair recently became the first to rack up 2000 runs in T20Is. While Pakistan’s middle-order has been under the scanner for quite some time, it’s been hard to point fingers at their opening batters.
Both the batsman are at the prime of their career and Pakistan would be hoping for them to come good in the upcoming T20I CWC. Pakistan will start its ICC T20I CWC campaign against their arch-rivals India on 24th October 2022.
