Former Pakistani captain Rashid Latif showered current skipper Babar Azam with praise as he compared the right-hander to legendary Don Bradman and Brian Lara. Speaking in a YouTube video shared by a page dedicated to cricket named Cricket Den, Latif ranked Babar over Pakistani greats like Inzamam-ul- Haq, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and called him ‘Bradman and Lara of the current era.’ Recalling his 2019 tweet where he had written names of players like Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Waqar Younis, Younis Khan, Saqlain Mushtaq, and Mohammed Yousuf, Latif stated that Babar is ahead of all them.
He, however, emphasised that it would be unfair to compare the right-hander to the past-era players as the playing environment has changed drastically over the years. “We can’t compare because here I’m not only talking about Babar. All these guys, Virat, Rohit, Williamson all these cricketers who are playing ODIs, they are batting with 10 fielders,” he said in the video.
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Citing the example of former Pakistani opener Saeed Anwar, the 53-year-old said he would hardly practice before a game so to compare him to modern players would not be fair. Latif, however, labeled Anwar as the number one batter produced by Pakistan
The former skipper stated that earlier there used to be only four fielders inside the circle compared to five now. So, if Inzamam or Anwar got a chance to play today, they would ‘eat bowlers’ if one fielder was less outside the circle.
“They were greats of that era. He (Babar) is the Bradman and Lara of this era. That’s the thing,” Latif added.
Playing for Pakistan in 40 Tests since his debut in 2016, Babar has scored a total of 2851 runs at an average of 45.98 and the highest score of 196.
In ODIs, the Pakistani skipper had 4261 runs from 84 innings in 86 matches.
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