Babar Azam will score five centuries in the coming five months: Basit Ali

After a disastrous outing in white-ball cricket like getting ousted in the group stages of World Cup 2023 and T20 World Cup 2024, Pakistan will eye a resurgence in red-ball cricket. Pakistan will be hosting Bangladesh for a two-match Test series starting from August 21. Babar Azam was evidently under pressure during recent ICC outings, and Basit Ali has urged the batter to focus on batting as he does not lead the team in Tests.

For the unversed, Babar displayed an average form with the bat, amassing just 320 runs in the World Cup 2023. He continued the rough patch with just 122 runs in the T20 World Cup 2024. Basit, hoping for a comeback from the right-handed batter, predicted that the latter would score five centuries going ahead. For the unversed, Shan Masood has been named as Pakistan’s skipper in the longest format.

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"Babar Azam will score five centuries in the coming five months. Babar has the best chance to leave the top batters behind, whether it is Kane Williamson or Joe Root. It is a very easy chance. However, now that the pressure of captaincy is off from him, he should forget about the captaincy. He should remove the thought of captaincy from his mind and just focus on scoring runs,” said Basit on his YouTube channel.

Babar needs to shorten his stance by a few inches: Basit

Babar’s issue with tackling the ball coming onto the wicket was evident during the Test series against Sri Lanka as he was caught plumb in front of the wicket by Prabhat Jayasuriya three times in the series. Basit, shedding light on the 29-year-old’s repeated failures, suggested a change in his current wide stance. He also drew a parallel between Virat Kohli’s height and Babar’s height suggesting the impact after the change in stance.

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"Babar Azam still has seven to eight days. He should start skipping ropes. I am giving him this advice which was given to me by Asian Bradman, Zaheer Abbas. It helps in feet movement. Also, Babar needs to shorten his stance by a few inches. If he does these things, he will leave the top batters behind in five months. If you want to see someone's stance, look at Virat Kohli. Both of them have the same height,” Basit added.