Azhar Ali became the eighth Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred and the first in five years
Bishen Jeswant22-Apr-2015Azhar Ali’s century in the 3rd ODI against Bangladesh made him the eighth Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred. India have had the most such captains, 11, with Australia having 10. While this difference may not seem stark, it is interesting that captains from India and Australia have cumulatively scored 78 ODI centuries (39 each) while Azhar Ali’s century is only the 10th by a Pakistan captain.
Team Mat 100 Mat/100 Players* Runs AveIndia 880 39 22.56 11 27378 41.16Australia 856 39 21.95 10 25970 36.99New Zealand 682 19 35.89 9 17920 32.64England 644 17 37.88 9 17333 31.74West Indies 731 18 40.61 8 17676 33.73Pakistan 840 10 84.00 8 19704 32.84Sri Lanka 752 21 35.81 7 21857 35.13South Africa 536 19 28.21 4 15846 39.71*The last Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred was Shahid Afridi, also against Bangladesh, during the 2010 Asia Cup. In fact, Afridi scored two centuries during that Asia Cup. The only other Pakistan batsman to score two hundreds as captain was Inzamam-ul-Haq.
Player Mat Runs Ave SR 100sRT Ponting 230 8497 42.91 83.41 22SC Ganguly 147 5104 38.66 76.2 11ST Jayasuriya 118 4377 38.73 88.05 10AB de Villiers 68 3418 69.75 111.8 9GC Smith 150 5416 38.96 83.06 8The only captain to score more than 20 ODI centuries is Ricky Ponting (22), followed by Saurav Ganguly (11) and Sanath Jayasuriya (10). Two among the top-four regular batsmen to captain their respective teams in the most ODIs without scoring a single century are from Pakistan – Misbah-ul-Haq (87) and Javed Miandad (62). The others are Hansie Cronje (138) and Habibul Bashar (69).
Player Runs Opposition Ground YearImran Khan 102* v Sri Lanka Leeds 1983Rameez Raja 104* v West Indies Sharjah 1995Aamer Sohail 105 v India Sharjah 1996Saeed Anwar 115 v Sri Lanka Nairobi (Gym) 1996Inzamam-ul-Haq 122 v India Karachi 2004Inzamam-ul-Haq 123 v India Lahore 2004Shoaib Malik 125* v India Karachi 2008Shahid Afridi 109 v Sri Lanka Dambulla 2010Shahid Afridi 124 v Bangladesh Dambulla 2010Azhar Ali 101 v Bangladesh Dhaka 2015Azhar Ali has scored 209 runs in this series making it only the ninth instance of a Pakistan captain scoring 200-plus runs in a bilateral ODI series. Inzamam has achieved this feat on three occasions while Misbah has done it twice.
