Babar Azam's Batting Style: Elegant, Technical, World-Class

Babar Azam is widely regarded as one of the most technically correct batters in contemporary cricket. His front-foot cover drive — played with the full face of the bat, weight transferring elegantly through the ball — has drawn comparisons to Virat Kohli and Kumar Sangakkara. He has been ranked among the top three batters in at least one format for most of his career.

Technical Strengths

• Cover drive: Babar's signature shot — full face of the bat, head over the ball, drives through mid-off with precision
• Straight drive: equal grace through the V between mid-off and mid-on
• Back-foot punch: plays late and hard off the back foot against short-pitched bowling
• Excellent judgement of off stump — rarely caught driving at wide ones
• Strong bottom hand but uses it to guide rather than dominate

Cross-Format Achievement

In 2021, Babar became only the second batter after Virat Kohli to be simultaneously ranked No. 1 in all three ICC formats (Test, ODI, T20I). He has scored multiple centuries across all three formats and was Pakistan's all-format captain before resigning from all captaincy in 2024. He became Pakistan's highest ODI scorer and passed 1000 T20I runs faster than most other batters.

Criticisms and Growth

Critics have noted that Babar's conversion rate of fifties to hundreds in T20Is has been below what his talent suggests, and that he has not always scored at the pace T20 cricket demands in power positions. He has worked on his strike rotation and power hitting; his ODI performance has been consistently world-class with very high averages.