Kohli is my role model in cricket: Babar Azam
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ISLAMABAD: World’s top T20 batsman, Pakistan’s Babar Azam, has said that Indian captain Virat Kohli was his role model in the game and he wanted to play like him. “Kohli is my role model and I want to follow him.
I like his confidence and balance and the way he reads a bowler and plays shots against him. The best thing about Kohli is the confidence with which he comes on the crease,” Babar said in his post-match comments after Pakistan’s win against New Zealand in the last T20 fixture of the three-match series.
The 24-year-old, who is also world number one in ICC T20 rankings scored 79 off 58 ball with seven boundaries and two sixes to help Pakistan complete a 3-0 whitewash against the Black Caps. When he was on 48, he completed 1000 runs in T20 internationals in just 26 innings, breaking Virat Kohli’s record of reaching the mark in 27 innings.
Babar said Kohli had a hunger for runs adding, “If he has scored a hundred in the last match, he would come into the next match as if has done nothing in the last innings.” “Before going to the crease (against New Zealand) I had Kohli’s record in my mind. But I told myself that I would have to play according to my team’s requirements. I continued playing my normal game. Now I am happy that besides playing a role in Pakistan’s win I also set the record,” he added.
Babar, who has not been impressive in Test matches as he has just scored 1571 runs in 15 matches at an average of 29.28 said he would try to carry his T20 form to the longest format of the game also. I will try to continue performing in the same fashion in the Test series against New Zealand, starting next week, he added.
To a question about playing as opener in the ODIs like the T20s, he said that it was up to the captain and coach as whom they wanted to send for that role. “Pakistan’s current ODI openers are doing well,” he said while agreeing that if he would be asked to open for Pakistan he would like to take on the role.
APP
