PAK vs NZ | Babar Azam surpasses Mohammad Yousuf to tally most runs in calendar year among his countrymates

Babar Azam added another feather to his cap on Monday when he achieved the feat of scoring the most number of international runs in a year among his countrymates. The 28-year-old surpassed Mohammad Yousuf’s 16-year-old record while playing Pakistan’s first of the two-match Test series against New Zealand at the National Bank Cricket Arena in Karachi. 

Batting first, when Babar scored the 13th run of his innings, he went past Yousuf’s tally of 2,435 runs, which he amassed in 2006, to become the highest run-getter in a calendar year by a Pakistani. Thus far, he has scored 735 runs in T20Is, 679 in ODIs, and in excess of 1,000 runs in Tests. At the time of writing, he is batting on 139 and is still going strong.

With a career-best rating of 871 pointsBabar currently sits on the third spot of the ICC’s Test batters rankings, after star Australian duo Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith. Barring him, only three batters – Joe Root (1,098 runs in 27 innings), Usman Khawaja (1,079 runs in 19 innings), and Jonny Bairstow (1,061 runs in 19 innings) – have scored over 1000 runs in this calendar year.

While the top two positions are held by Babar and Yousuf, they are followed by Saeed Anwar (2,296 in 1996), Yousuf again (2,226 in 2002), and Inzamam-ul-Haq (2,164 in 2000). In all, Ricky Ponting tops the chart, aggregating 2,833 runs in 2005. Virat Kohli (2,818 in 2017) and Kumar Sangakkara (2,813 in 2014) occupy the next two positions.