Babar Azam has been nominated for the ICC Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year award despite an up and down 12 months for Pakistan in the format.
The ICC have commenced their announcement of the nominations for their year-end awards, having earlier named the players shortlisted for the Emerging Cricketer of the Year award. The men’s category has four nominees, with Gus Atkinson and Saim Ayub joining Shamar Joseph and Kamindu Mendis. The women’s contenders include Annerie Dercksen, Saskia Horley, Shreyanka Patil and Freya Sargent.
On Sunday (December 29), the ICC also announced the men’s and women’s T20I nominees. The contenders are Arshdeep Singh, Babar Azam, Sikandar Raza and Travis Head in the male category, with Orla Prendergast, Laura Wolvaardt, Melie Kerr and Chamari Athapaththu among the top four in the women's.
According to an ICC release, shortlists have been drawn up by a specialist panel of cricket writers and broadcasters, who selected the nominees according to on-field performances and overall achievements in international cricket throughout the calendar year.
Babar Azam’s “mixed year”
In their description of Babar's year in 2024, the ICCwrote on their website: "Despite a mixed year, no other Pakistan batter scored as many T20I runs as Babar Azam in the last 12 months. With six fifties and close to a hundred boundaries, Babar was Pakistan’s mainstay and the year saw an improvement in his strike rate, with the batter clocking 133.21 runs every 100 deliveries. Still only 30, Babar is primed to break Rohit Sharma’s record as the highest run-getter in T20I cricket soon, sitting just eight behind the Indian’s mark of 4231 runs."
Former Pakistan skipper Babar, who made 738 runs in 23 innings at an average of 33.54. Babar sits at the top of the run charts among Full Members in 2024, making more than 100 runs more than the next batter on the list. Mohammad Rizwan, who made 617 runs, is the second-highest run-scorer from Pakistan in the format this year. The two are the only Pakistan players with more than 500 runs in T20Is in 2024.
However, his strike rate of 133.21 continued to make headlines, putting him 30th out of 48 Full Member batters with more than 300 runs in the year.
