The ‘Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy’ was presented to Pakistan captain Babar Azam on Thursday, after the International Cricket Council (ICC) named him the Men’s Cricketer of the Year 2022.
In the year 2022, Babar Azam continued to set new standards for himself by shattering even more of his own personal records while also ensuring that Pakistan’s light shone brilliantly.
Babar Azam went over that milestone while amassing an incredible 2598 runs at a scary average of 54.12 runs per game.
In every single one of the game’s formats, he was the only player to finish the year with more than 2,000 runs scored for his team.
The previous year, which Babar completed, was the best of his career to this point, and there is no question that the powerful right-hander is currently at the top of his game. Babar’s haul of 817 fifties throughout the calendar year was his best to date.
The 2021 and 2022 ICC Men’s ODI Player of the Year dominated the 50-over format, scoring a total of 679 runs in nine games throughout the course of his career.
The fact that he had scores of 50 or more in eight of those innings is evidence of his consistency as a player.
Given that the 28-year-old continues to hold the number one spot in the ICC Men’s ODI Player Rankings, it should not come as a shock that he was selected as the ICC Men’s ODI Player of the Year for a second year in a row.
In spite of the fact that his side did not always perform well, Babar had an outstanding year in test cricket. Despite this, Babar scored a tonne of runs.
In the format that was played for longer, he scored 1184 runs for Pakistan in only nine games, which was the majority of the hard lifting that was done.
The accomplishments of Pakistan in the one-day international format during Babar’s tenure as captain were particularly significant due to the fact that they won all three of the ODI series in which they competed, losing only one game out of nine versus Australia.
He led Pakistan to their first Men’s T20 World Cup final since 2009 in the T20I format. In that year, Babar’s squad had placed second to England, who went on to win the tournament. He directed Pakistan to their first Men’s T20 World Cup final since 2009.
When everything was on the line and Pakistan was facing down the barrel of a loss in the second Test that was being played in Karachi, there was one guy who stood between Australia and a victory.
After being bowled out for 148 in their first innings, Pakistan found themselves trailing Australia by an enormous margin of 408 runs. The guests had little over six more sessions left when they batted again and gave the home team a target score of 506 runs to beat.
Pakistan’s batting effort got off to the worst possible start as they lost two wickets with only 21 runs on the board and five sessions remained to play.
As soon as Babar Azam arrived on the scene, a gruelling 10-hour marathon that came dangerously close to saving Pakistan from defeat got underway.