‘Babar Azam is on the road to greatness’- Ian Bishop

Former West Indies pacer and renowned commentator Ian Bishop believes that Babar Azam is on the road to greatness in ODI cricket.

In an exclusive interview with CricWick, Bishop said that the current white-ball skipper of Pakistan will be one of the greatest white ball players in the history of the game.

"Babar Azam is on the road to greatness. And I want to be clear when I say on the road to it in white-ball cricket at least and certainly 50-overs cricket," said Ian Bishop in an exclusive interview with Cricwick.

The 27-year-old batter is in the form of his life across the three formats of international cricket. His current ODI record stands at 4441 runs at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 90.3 with 17 tons in 88 appearances. Babar's numbers are convincing enough for Bishop to term him a Great.

"Because I don't use the term great loosely. I think I discussed this with a couple of my colleagues 24 hours ago. It has to be a bigger sample size but average as it stands now, on the cusp of 60 with 17 ODI hundreds.

"He has almost overtaken his next door neighbour the great Virat Kohli in terms of the ultimate uber 50-over batsman," he added.

According to Bishop, the technical superiority of Babar is right over the top since he operates in straight lines.

"His Test cricket is still a work in progress, and I am actually surprised that he hadn't taken to Test cricket and the numbers a lot earlier.

He is starting to get better at it because technically, he is superb. Straight lines which is a particular fetish about batting that I like. The Tendulkars, the Kohlis, and Babar Azam is in that class. And it is a transferable skill what I'd say 50-over to T20 or 50 over to Test match cricket," Bishop opined.

Bishop is hopeful that Babar will translate his white-ball form into red-ball cricket and in the future, he'll be up there with the top 3 or 4 Test batters in the world.

"So in future, I am hoping that in Test cricket he will be mentioned in the same breath as the top 3 or 4 guys but as a white-ball player and particularly in ODIs, technically, temperamentally superb and aesthetically the most pleasing batsman in the world today, the former WI cricketer stated.

Bishop also revealed that he also searches for the tweets of his fellow commentators whenever Pakistan's stalwart plays a cover drive or a straight drive. 

"Whenever he (Babar) comes out to bat I have a few commentator colleagues and I just look for their tweets on social media whenever he plays a cover drive or a straight drive. That tells you a lot when people who have played the game turn up to watch you bat," Bishop concluded.