Babar Azam finished his stint with the Rangpur Riders at the 2024 Bangladesh Premier League on February 6, amassing 251 runs from six matches at a strike rate of 114.61 and leaving the league as the top run-scorer 21 games into the season.

Following a controversy surrounding the issuing of NOCs to Pakistan players for the league, Babar was granted permission by the PCB to appear in the tournament and had an immediate impact.

Opening the batting, Babar scored a fifty in his first game of the season, anchoring a low run-chase of 121 against Sylhet Strikers on a tricky Mirpur surface. At 39-6, Rangpur looked down and out before Babar stitched an unbeaten 86-run partnership with Azmatullah Omarzai to take his team to victory.

The next game was a disappointment as he struggled his way to two off eight balls in a run-chase of 161. Rangpur lost the game by 28 runs.

Two games into the season, Babar’s tally read 58 off 57 balls. Recently, Pakistan had moved him down to No.3 in the T20I side with an aim to get quicker starts than the pair of Rizwan and Babar would usually provide. With a strike rate of just about run-a-ball in the first two games of BPL 2024, voices questioning Babar’s quality as a T20 batter started getting louder again.

Run-scoring has never been a concern for the former Pakistan captain, even in the shortest format. He is on the verge of reaching 10,000 T20 runs at a ridiculous average of 43.72. No one in the history of the format has scored more at a better average.

Which is why it wasn’t a surprise when after the uncharacteristic blip in his second game of BPL 2024, Babar bounced back with four back-to-back scores of 35-plus, including one half-century. Set to leave Bangladesh after Rangpur’s game against Duronto Dhaka on February 6, Babar finished his season with an average of 50.2. The number in focus, however, was once again the strike rate, which read 114.6.

Among the top ten run-scorers in the league till Babar’s last outing, no one scored slower than him. Among the top 15, only one did. Babar’s tally of just two sixes across the six games was also the lowest among the top 20 run-scorers till his departure.

The Bangladesh Premier League is different gravy

Babar’s BPL 2024 campaign might not have been great viewing for people who watch T20s with the sole intention of watching balls sail over the boundaries. And they are not to be blamed, for that is, in part, what the format is designed for. But optics are not always correlated to effectiveness in cricket.

The Bangladesh Premier League is not like any other T20 franchise tournament. Pitches here are usually low, slow, and make hitting through the line a nightmare for batters. Add to that the never-ending production line of finger spinners that Bangladesh have in their system, and it results in a very un-T20-like league where scores are usually low and chasing isn’t easy.

Among the major T20 leagues around the world, Bangladesh Premier League features thrice in the list of tournaments with the six lowest scoring rates. BPL 2024 has seen runs scored at 7.05 runs per over (rpo) at the time of writing – only CPL 2013, BPL 2016, CPL 2020, BPL 2017, and IPL 2009 had a lower scoring rate.

This puts into perspective Babar’s approach. In a team where only one other batter has averaged 30 so far and only one other batter has managed to score a fifty, Babar was the binding force. He provided solidity, which has far greater importance at the BPL than at other franchise leagues around the globe.

There can be no better representation of the effectiveness of Babar’s ‘slow’ batting than the fact that on each of the five occasions where he scored 35-plus, Rangpur won, and the only time he didn’t, they lost.

His 62 off 46 against Dhaka enabled Rangpur to set 183, 79 more than what was required in the end. His 37 off 36 provided a platform for the finishers to take Rangpur to 165, a par score which proved eight runs too many for Comilla.

Babar finished his campaign with twin 47s – off 37 balls against Sylhet and off 43 balls against Dhaka. On both occasions, Rangpur scored more than 160 batting first as Babar’s reliability allowed other batters in the middle order to take the necessary risks.

With more than half the tournament still to go, Babar is set to be displaced as the highest run-scorer soon. 251 runs at a strike rate of 114.6 in a T20 campaign will not make for pretty reading a few months down the line and will be added to the list of arguments used against his quality as a T20 batter. It won’t belong there, however.

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