‘Only rain can stop Babar Azam’ — Blessing Muzarabani, who has Babar’s number, disagrees

Babar Azam is inarguably one of the world’s best contemporary all-format batsmen right now. But there is one bowler that even the Pakistan captain hasn’t quite yet got the wood over and that is Zimbabwe’s young, promising speedster Blessing Muzarabani. The 24-year-old tall right-arm seamer has dismissed the modern-day Pakistani batting giant five times in […]
 
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‘Only rain can stop Babar Azam’ — Blessing Muzarabani, who has Babar’s number, disagrees

Babar Azam is inarguably one of the world’s best contemporary all-format batsmen right now. But there is one bowler that even the Pakistan captain hasn’t quite yet got the wood over and that is Zimbabwe’s young, promising speedster Blessing Muzarabani.

The 24-year-old tall right-arm seamer has dismissed the modern-day Pakistani batting giant five times in international cricket, once in Test matches and twice each in ODIs and T20Is across 15 matches.

Muzarabani’s five dismissals of Babar is the joint second-highest number of times any bowler has got the elegant right-hander out at the top level alongside England wrist-spinner Adil Rashid and Sri Lanka pacer Nuwan Pradeep.

Australian seamer Josh Hazlewood (8 times) boasts of the record of having dismissed Babar Azam the most times in international cricket.

‘Only rain can stop Babar Azam’ — Blessing Muzarabani, who has Babar’s number, disagrees

Pakistan giant Babar Azam has been out five times to Blessing Muzarabani.

“Who am I?”, Blessing Muzarabani reminds fans he has had Babar Azam’s number

Babar has faced a total of 103 balls versus Blessing Muzarabani. In each of the five times he has gotten out caught against the Zimbabwean quick, two times by the wicketkeeper and thrice by other fieldsmen.

‘Only rain can stop Babar Azam’ — Blessing Muzarabani, who has Babar’s number, disagrees

Babar has managed to score runs off Muzarabani’s bowling in ODIs (70 off 68 balls) and T20Is (36 off 30), but is yet to open his account in Tests against him. The ace batsman had a first-ball duck facing the pacer in a Test match earlier this year in Harare and hasn’t quite found a method to completely conquer the challenge posed by him.

Aware of the same, Blessing Muzarabani on Monday (August 2) made a cheeky tweet about his rivalry with Babar. As the rain played spoilsport in the third West Indies-Pakistan T20I in Grenada, a Twitter user mentioned, “Only rain can stop Babar from scoring”, to which Muzarabani wrote, “Who am I?”.

Muzarabani has played 6 Tests, 24 ODIs and 18 T20Is with 72 wickets in international cricket. The 24-year-old has also played county cricket for Northamtonshire, besides featuring in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) for Multan Sultans.