Pakistan Super League 2023

Watch: Azam Khan sweeps Hasnain for 102m six, reminds fans of father Moin

by Wisden Staff February 26, 2023 - 10:54am 3 minute read

Watch: In a Pakistan Super League 2023 match, Azam Khan swept Mohammad Hasnain for six, evoking comparisons on social media with father Moin.

Azam began cautiously against Quetta Gladiators at the National Stadium in Karachi, scoring 21 off the first 18 balls he faced. He then launched a furious onslaught, and eventually fell for a 42-ball 97, scoring 76 off 24 balls in his innings.

In all, he hit nine fours and eight sixes, three of which came off consecutive balls from Hasnain in the 19th over. After the first two, against balls short of a length, soared into the stands over deep mid-wicket, Hasnain decided to pitch up and bowl wider outside off-stump.

Azam responded by going down on one knee and sweeping the 140 kph ball over deep square leg. The ball landed on the roof of the stadium.

The short reminded many of Azam’s father Moin, one of the early exponents of the sweep shot against fast bowlers on a regular basis, most famously off Damien Fleming in the league match of the 1999 World Cup, in Headingley.

Moin finished with 242 runs at a strike rate of 111 in that World Cup, next to only Lance Klusener’s 122 among batters with a 150-run cut-off.

One of the most dangerous batters of the era, Moin later made 221 runs in the five Twenty20 matches he played – at an ahead-of-his-times strike rate of 157. This included the 59-ball 112 for Karachi Dolphins against Lahore Lions in 2004/05, the first Twenty20 hundred on Asian soil.

In the match, Islamabad United posted 220-6 and bowled out the Gladiators for 157.