5 bowlers who can neutralize Babar Azam

In the recent past, we have always tended to talk a lot about the Fab 4. There’s absolutely no doubt that Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Kane Williamson and Joe Root are ruling the roast across all formats. Their consistency has been remarkable over the last few years. In fact, they have dominated in most places they’ve played.

However, there is a certain Babar Azam who has done really well across formats as well. He averages in excess of 50 in white-ball cricket (both ODIs and T20Is). In fact, he has the third-most hundreds by a Pakistani batsman in ODI cricket. Moreover, no player who has played at least 20 innings in T20Is has a better average than Azam. In Test cricket, he had a slow start but he is now slowly but surely coming up the ranks.

Thus, there’s absolutely no doubt that he is one of the most promising batsmen in world cricket at the moment. He’s been in fabulous form in recent times and has been striking the ball beautifully. Hence, here we look at five bowlers who can neutralize the threat that Babar Azam brings.

1. Jasprit Bumrah

There’s absolutely no doubt that Jasprit Bumrah is currently one of the best bowlers across all formats in world cricket. When he first burst on to the international scene in 2016, a lot of people didn’t expect him to go way. However, he has proved a lot of them wrong as he’s become India’s premier bowler across all formats.

Bumrah started out as a white-ball specialist for India. He was excellent with the new ball and fabulous at the death. However, his red-ball skills were questioned. But he overcame those odds as well. The Gujarat lad has been churning out wickets in Test cricket ever since his debut.

Bumrah and Azam have faced off in a few ODI games over the last couple of years. However, the Pakistan No. 3 hasn’t faced India’s premier fast bowler a lot. In fact, Bumrah has bowled just 26 deliveries to Azam and 16 of them have been dots. However, he hasn’t dismissed the Pakistan batsman even once. But the Indian pace ace has all the ingredients to get past Azam. Irrespective of the format or the stage of the game, Bumrah has the game to come out on top.