Babar Azam is as good as Virat Kohli: Mickey Arthur

Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur believes that Babar Azam has the potential to be one of the best batsmen in the world. Azam has been in fine form in recent time following back to back centuries in the ODIs against the West Indies. Azam followed this performance with some tremendous batting in the subsequent Test series that followed.

In recent times, Azam has been in decent form, especially following his well-constructed innings of 90 against a fiery New Zealand attack at Seddon Park in Hamilton. Mickey Arthur was full of praise for Azam and also went as far as comparing him to Indian batsman Virat Kohli, who is considered by most to be the best modern-day batsman at the moment.

“He’s a young gun who will be an exceptional player,” said Arthur. “I’ll go so far as to say, at the same age, I reckon, he’s as good as Virat Kohli, which I know that’s high praise but he’s right up there.”

Arthur also went on to add a few words on how the Pakistan side has grown and improved under his reign as coach. “I think we’ve become better and better as the series has gone on,” Arthur said on Perth’s 6PR radio station. “We arrived straight from Dubai to five days of rain in Nelson so we didn’t get any training or a practice game, which was completely rained out. And there was an earthquake as well.”

He added: “We almost went into the first Test match pretty cold, played OK there and we’ve played a lot better in this [second] Test match. Had this series gone another Test match we would have been better for the conditions. Hopefully, this has put us in good stead for what we can experience in Australia.”