United Arab Emirates
USA
1st innings (away)
Karachi, February 2025, Babar Azam gets a half-volley from Jacob Duffy, hits it through cover, and just like that he’s the joint-fastest man ever to 6,000 ODI runs in 123 innings. Same as Hashim Amla, better than Virat Kohli.
You’d think the headlines would write themselves. They didn’t, not for long. A few days later, the talk was about a 64 off 90 balls. That’s the strange thing about the Babar Azam ODI journey. The stats say one thing, the mood around him says another, and both are fair.
Babar Azam’s ODI career: Start you couldn’t ignore
He debuted on May 31, 2015, against Zimbabwe in Lahore. 54 off 60 balls, and the match fizzled out with no result. Nothing dramatic, but you could see something there.
The first hundred wasn’t far behind. He scored 120 against West Indies in the UAE in 2016, in his 16th ODI innings. Then 123 runs in the next game and then 117. Three in a row, 360 runs across the series, and suddenly everyone in Pakistan was talking about him.
Fastest climb in ODI history
The pace barely dropped. He got to 2,000 runs in 45 innings in 2018, and only Amla has done that quicker. In 2019, he made 1,092 runs in 20 innings at an average of over 60. Then, in the 2019 World Cup, his 474 runs went past Javed Miandad’s record for a single edition. Pakistan missed the semi-final on net run rate. Not Babar’s fault.
Then the milestones got silly. Fastest to 5,000 runs (97 innings). Fastest to 15 hundreds (83 innings). For a while he was making a hundred roughly every five and a half innings. That’s not a typo. Think about it: most batters would be happy owning just one of those records.
Babar’s ODI captaincy: Up, then down
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) gave him the ODI captaincy in May 2020. He took to it like he’d done it for years, reaching 1,000 runs as captain in just 13 innings, faster than anyone. In April 2021, he led Pakistan to a 2-1 series win in South Africa, scoring two knocks of 103 and 94 runs, and with that he broke Kohli’s record of 1,258 days as the world’s top-ranked ODI batter.
READ: Babar Azam’s journey: sea of peaks, dips and weight of nation
It kept going. A 114 off 83 balls against Australia helped chase down 349, Pakistan’s highest ODI chase back then in 2022. He was named ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2021 and 2022. And in May 2023, Pakistan reached number one in the rankings.
Pakistan had already wobbled at the Asia Cup just before the 2023 ODI World Cup, and in India it got worse. Five defeats, including to Afghanistan and India. Babar scored 320 runs in nine games, averaging 40, with a top score of 74. Respectable on paper, but not what the team needed from its captain. On November 15, 2023, he quit as captain in all formats after 134 matches in charge.
Century drought and strike-rate debate
Here’s a number nobody enjoyed: 807 days. That’s how long he went without a hundred after his 151 against Nepal at the 2023 Asia Cup. 83 innings. Worth remembering, too, that Kohli went through an almost identical wait of 83 innings before he ended his own drought at the 2022 Asia Cup. Even the greats have these stretches. Still, that doesn’t make them easier to sit through.
By the 2025 Champions Trophy, people had stopped asking how many he scored and started asking how. Chasing 321 against New Zealand in the opener, Babar made 64 off 90 balls, a strike rate of 71.11. He took 27 balls to score just 12 early on. Pakistan lost by 60.
The reaction was loud. Shoaib Akhtar was unsparing. Wasim Akram said he’d happily take 35 off 30 over 64 off 90. Ravichandran Ashwin called it a tortoise-and-hare story. Even Steve Smith, who had no reason to say anything, told Pakistan fans not to worry.
And yet. Babar led Peshawar Zalmi to the PSL 2026 title with 588 runs in 11 innings, averaging 73.50 at a strike rate of almost 146, including two hundreds. Is that a man who can’t attack? Maybe he can. Maybe he just chooses when.
So, was the criticism fair? Partly. His career strike rate is about 87, and he averages over 53, so “slow” isn’t quite right. But the careful powerplay approach is the thing critics keep pointing at, and it’s hard to argue they’re making it up.
Babar Azam ODI records that still stand
On November 14, 2025, in Rawalpindi, the wait finally ended. An unbeaten 102 off 119 balls against Sri Lanka, his 20th ODI hundred, tied Saeed Anwar’s Pakistan record. Anwar took 243 innings to get there. Babar took 136 innings. Put differently, he got there 107 innings sooner than the man whose record he matched. Only Amla (108) and Kohli (133) were quicker. It was his 32nd international century as well.
As of the Australia series in June 2026, he’d played 143 ODIs, scored 6,626 runs at 53.43, with 20 hundreds and 38 fifties.
What’s next for Azam in ODIs?
He came back into the ODI squad for the Australia series after missing the Bangladesh tour with a fitness issue, and this time Shaheen Afridi’s the captain. Pakistan won 2-1. Babar made a fifty in the first game and a calm 40 in the decider, but no hundred, so the record is still shared. It’ll probably go to him sooner or later. He’s also back as Test captain this year, so the leadership load isn’t going anywhere.
Babar Azam’s ODI story isn’t finished, and that’s what makes it interesting. He’s the guy who reached 5,000 and 6,000 faster than almost anyone. Now he’s chasing something harder: proving he can bat the way today’s ODI game asks. One more hundred and he’s alone at the top of Pakistan’s list. But the real question is how he scores it.
Written by Iqra Afroz
Iqra Afroz is a sports content writer at SportsManch with a growing passion for cricket and contemporary sports media. She specialises in news writing and digital content, with a focus on delivering concise, accurate and reader-friendly stories. With a keen eye for detail, Iqra aims to provide informative and engaging sports coverage while continuing to develop her voice as a modern sports journalist.
