Is Babar Azam (The Big One) a Part Of Fab 4?

Fab 4 is the term cricket experts and fans use to represent the best 4 batsman of the present era. The players associated with the fab 4 includes Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, and Joe Root. The fab 4 is purely based on the stats i.e Strike Rate and Average of the batsman and this is the reason that these 4 are the members of the fab 4, they have dominated all the formats over the past decade. These players are not only the best players of the last decade but they are one of the greatest of all time.

Is Babar a part of fab 4? For Babar Azam to be a part of fab 4 means we have to replace him with someone from fab 4 which is very difficult to do because all these players have been playing international cricket for around 12–14 years and they have way bigger figures as compared to Babar Azam who has only been around for 7 years in international cricket. Virat Kohli has scored 23726 international runs in 463(517 Innings) matches at an average of 53.55, Joe Root has scored 17558 international runs in 310 matches(401 Innings) at an average of 49.45, Steve Smith has scored 13548 international runs in 274(314 Innings) matches at an average of 49.44 and Kane Williamson has scored 15562 international runs in 313 matches(370 Innings) at an average of 46.87. Meanwhile, Babar has scored 10153 international runs in 204 matches(229 Innings) at an average of 51.27. The way Babar is playing there is no doubt he would end up as one of the greats of cricket. Babar Azam is currently the strongest contender to be a part of fab 4. Since 2019, Babar has scored 5764 International runs at an average of 55.42 which is the most for any player in this period. Virat Kohli is in terrible form according to his standards, he has 70 international centuries but he last scored an international century on 22nd November 2019. On the other hand, Joe Root is scoring centuries for fun in Test cricket, in the past year and a half Root has scored 11 Test centuries which is insane. Steve Smith has scored 3487 international runs since 2019 at an average of 49.11 and Kane Williamson has scored 3089 international runs at an average of 50.64 in this period.

Apart from Virat, all other players have been in top form during this period but a couple of bad years for Virat can not take back his match-winning performances over the past 14 years. Babar surely has performed better than all the players of fab 4 but all these players have played a lot of cricket and have a lot of experience too (More than Babar) so it is really difficult to replace any of them. Since the fab 4 was specifically made for these players so it won’t make sense to replace them but if it can be extended to fab 5 then Babar will obviously be there but I doubt it can happen because the term “Fab 4” has been procured from “Fantastic four” movie which only has four superheroes. If the fab 4 has to be made on the current form then I would replace Virat with Babar. My fab 4 on the basis of current form would look something like this ( Babar Azam, Steven Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson). Currently, Babar Azam is in a league of his own, there is no competition of him in world cricket right now. In the last 4 Months, Babar has played 2 one of the greatest knocks in Test cricket history(196 vs Aus at Karachi in the 2nd Test and 119 at Galle vs Sri Lanka in the 1st Test 2022). Babar was the highest run getter in T20 World Cup 2021 and was the top scorer for Pakistan in the 2019 World Cup. As Simon Doull said: “As far as batting in that top order is concerned, he is unbelievable. Joe Root has got an argument for that, but when you talk about the Big Four, at the moment, he is the Big One.”