Peshawar Zalmi skipper Babar Azam roared back to form with an unbeaten century in his team's Pakistan Super League (PSL) match against Quetta Gladiators in Karachi on Sunday.
Babar scored an unbeaten 100 off just 52 balls, hitting six fours and four sixes. His knock, along with Kusal Mendis' 83, helped Peshawar Zalmi post a mammoth total of 255/3 from 20 overs. Peshawar successfully defended that total, bowling out Quetta Gladiators for 137 in 18.1 overs.
Babar Azam breaks Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle's record
During his entertaining knock, the former Pakistan skipper broke a notable record of Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle. Babar Azam reached 12,000 runs in T20 cricket in 338 innings, and this made him the fastest batter to the 12k milestone.
Chris Gayle, the former West Indies big-hitter, had taken 344 innings to reach the milestone, whereas Virat Kohli took 360 innings.
Babar Azam is currently in second place in terms of batters with most T20 centuries. Chris Gayle leads that list with 22 T20 centuries, with Babar Azam in second place with 12 T20 hundreds.
The last time Babar hit a century in T20s prior to Sunday was in February 2024, when he slammed an unbeaten 111 from 63 balls against Islamabad United.
The 31-year-old has played 145 T20Is for Pakistan and has scored 4596 runs, including 39 fifties and three centuries. At the 2026 T20 World Cup recently, Babar scored just 91 runs from six matches at a strike rate of 112.34.
He was dropped from the Pakistan squad for the ODI series against Bangladesh due to his poor batting at the T20 World Cup.
Babar Azam spoke on his special knock after the match. "Scoring a hundred always feels special, no matter how many you’ve made before, and there’s a different kind of satisfaction in reaching that milestone again.
"When I took that run off the last ball, I had a slight doubt because after playing the shot I felt I might be late, but then when I completed it and realized I had gotten there, it brought out a completely different emotion, and I’m grateful to Almighty for helping me achieve it," he said.
