The former Pakistan captain and legendary left-arm fast bowler Wasim Akram has picked the new fab 4, and he has, surprisingly, left out the Australian vice-captain Steve Smith and the New Zealand captain Kane Williamson out of the list.
According to Wasim Akram, Babar Azam now gets into the fab 4 and the Aussie opener David Warner also finds himself a place there because of his versatile batting capabilities in all formats of the game. Virat Kohli and the England captain Joe Root are the other two names that Akram has gone with.
Akram’s list of fab 4, which he picked while speaking on Sport 360, is interesting because Virat Kohli is someone who has not been at his best in any format of the game in the last couple of years, while Kane Williamson has played quite a few crucial knocks for New Zealand in very important matches.
The Kiwi skipper had led the chase from the front in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) against India, and he played an extraordinary knock in the final of the recently finished T20 World Cup as well. His 85 against Australia had put New Zealand in a position where they could have fancied winning their first-ever World Cup before Mitchell Marsh took the match away from them.
As far as Steve Smith is concerned, he might have struggled a little bit in the T20 World Cup, but his white-ball form can’t really be judged on the basis of it because he has played very few white-ball games in recent times.
Smith scored two hundreds in the 3-match ODI series against India last year and has not played an ODI ever since. And, he scored 93 in an Ashes test match only a couple of days ago. To leave Williamson and Smith out of fab 4 is debatable.
Wasim Akram reckons Babar Azam will dominate world cricket in the next few years
Even though his current form isn’t great, Virat Kohli’s selection in fab 4 is still justifiable on the basis of his past records, but Babar Azam, for all his heroics in white-ball cricket, is yet to get himself into the top bracket in test matches. The Pakistan captain has scored just one test hundred outside Asia so far, despite having played a handful of games, which doesn’t justify his reputation in red-ball cricket at all.
Wasim Akram has, however, predicted that Babar Azam is going to dominate world cricket in the next few years to come. Akram is of the view that Babar has got immense potential and his work ethic combined with his potential makes him an incredible player.
