I meant best opening pair for Pakistan.. not the entire cricketing world. Thats the difference. SR is definitely an issue with babar and Rizwan.. but they did score runs for Pakistan..how is saim any better in terms of SR? We need to have an evidence to support this SR debate.. saim has 128 SR and average of 15 runs per game.. how does that trump babar and rizwan's numbers? People talk about impactful players.. you cant have an impact by scoring at average of 15.. even if those 15 came at 200 sr.. thats not the definition of impact.. dnt let me start on Iftikhar
That's regardless of the point. People are stuck in 2021 when they were the pair but are beyond ignorant of what happened after.
Babar's peak performance was in 2016-2021. Ever since then he's regressed.
They had great years In 2021 I agree, no argument but
From 2022 to 2024
1) Babar and rizwan consistently failed in 2 tournaments, Babar especially had he not made that 50 in the semi final, had he not been dropped on 0, his avg would have dropped from 17 to 10, 10 avg means he'd hold the record of worst performance in a world cup by a top order batter in world cup history.
2) since 2022 Babar has managed to reach overs 16-20 only once where he can strike at 212, otherwise from overs 7-15, he's actually slower then pp striking at 110.
On top of which since 2022, Babar avg has dropped from 48 to 40 and this was when he was batting with rizwam aka when the batting pair was intact. Next game if he falls under 40, avg will now fall to 39.
3) In rizwan's case he had a miserable outing in 2024 in the last series, so much so that he himself claimed that he had lost form and the opening partnership had dented him a bit.
Afterwards in psl he has the lowest sr as a top order bat which is 110, which is even lower then his career avg of 122.
To put into perspective rizwan had a sr of 110 and avg 33 in psl, while saud shakeel while isn't even a t20 batsmen had an avg of 35 with a sr of 141 deapite being one of the slower bats in the psl.
Further more now in this nz tour he's had another miserable outing and injury same with babar whose having a bad series.
Why isn't anyone bringing up their severe lack of form and regression from 2022? It's been 2 whole years since then, 2 years of these 2 failing miserably?
Any other team on the planet would have sacked these 2 or gotten rid of the partnership from 2022 wc outing alone or heck even asai cup outing.
As I said it's been 2 years, no need to fetch 2016-2021 again. It's clear as day from THEIR OWN ADMISSIONS, that their out of form and aren't the players they were back then.
So no atm, they are not out best opening pair. Not even close. Saud, Abdullah, Fakhar, shabzada farhan and even saim ayub are superior on current form, granted these guys aren't super inpactful either.