Babar Azam vs Virat Kohli centuries: The mutual respect between these two cricketers had won fans’ hearts from either side of the border.
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When team India lost the second of the recently concluded three-match ODI series against England at the Lord’s in London, Virat Kohli was yet again the man and the topic to be discussed and debated, as the 33-year-old headed back towards the dressing room after registering yet another low score in international Cricket, leaving his fans poker-faced with an ever-lasting spell of disappointment.
Post midnight, however, Pakistan skipper and one of the best batters across formats at present, Babar Azam, took to his social media handle to lend a shoulder to the champion Indian batter, affirming him that this bad phase would pass soon, while advising him to stay strong. Kohli too, some hours later thanked Babar for his words, while wishing him all the best for his future or perhaps his team’s ongoing away Test series versus Sri Lanka.
While Kohli yet again got dismissed on a low score (17) during the third ODI yesterday at Old Trafford, Babar went on to smash his 7th Test century of the highest order, with the rest of the batting line-up falling like a deck of cards in the first innings of the 1st Test against Sri Lanka at Galle.
Babar also, in the process, went on to become the fastest Asian to complete 10,000 international runs, surpassing Kohli himself to the landmark.
Virat Kohli had raised his standards so high that now even an average of 36.75 is looking bad. It’s not that he is terribly out of form but only failing to convert scores into centuries like he used to do in the past. He still has 9 fifties in last 20 innings in ODIs. #EngvInd pic.twitter.com/TLuJCDbrlR
— Mazher Arshad (@MazherArshad) July 17, 2022
Babar Azam vs Virat Kohli centuries
Two modern day legends for sure, but there is no comparison between these two batters in terms of the number of respective individual centuries they have hit in their international career so far.
While Virat made his international debut in the year 2008, Babar arrived at the international cricketing scene only in 2015.
With consistency being the hallmark of both these right-handed batters, while Virat has a total of 70 centuries (27 ODI and 43 Test) across 463 international matches, Babar has 25 tons (17 ODI, 7 Test, and 1 T20I) under his name in 204* international games for his side.
While it remains to be seen how close Babar gets to Virat’s century count in the coming years, the cricketing fraternity would also keep a keen eye on how Kohli manages to come out of what is perhaps the lowest point in his career so far with the bat.
