5 Players who have a better T20I batting average than both Virat Kohli and Babar Azam

4. Matthew Hayden – 51.33

The T20I Cricket came quite late for Matthew Hayden to show his dominance as the Australian opener’s efforts in Twenty20 format were restricted to the Indian Premier League. Hayden featured in the first three editions of the IPL for the Chennai Super Kings where he scored 1107 runs across 32 innings. He scored those runs at an average of 36.90 and a strike rate of 137.5.

The left-hander struck eight fifties in his 32-match IPL career and even won the Orange Cap during the 2009 edition hosted by South Africa where he aggregated 572 runs. However, Matthew Hayden got to play only nine matches during his T20I career out of which six games were played during the inaugural edition of the World T20 in 2007. Hayden retired at the start of 2009 but played his last T20I in 2007 only.

The T20I format wasn’t as regular as it has been in the past decade during Hayden’s time. The hefty batsman scored 308 runs at an average of 51.33 and a strike rate of 143.92. During the WT20 alone, Hayden scored 265 runs at 88.33 average with help of four fifties to end as the leading run-getter of the tournament. Only Virat Kohli (2014) has managed to score as many as four fifties in a single edition of T20 World Cup after Hayden.