Srinagar: Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt has said that comparing Virat Kohli and Babar Azam is not fair and is like comparing Wasim Akram with Shaheen Afridi.
Babar Azam won ICC Cricketer of the Year and ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year awards recently and is being repeatedly compared with Virat Kohli.
However, Salman Butt believes that it won’t be right to compare the two at the moment, insisting that Kohli is at a different stage of his career.
“Both are world class cricketers and top-notch performers. But there’s no comparison with Virat Kohli at this point of his career. Kohli has scored 74 international tons and he didn’t score a hundred in three years. Now you can imagine the magnitude of his performances,” Butt told paktv.tv in a chat.
“There’s a phase in cricketer’s life when they perform brilliantly, but then start to struggle. Babar is performing exceptionally right now and we hope he only improves from here. We want him to be a great. Most role models in Pakistan have played exciting cricket, not consistent cricket. After a long time, we have got a player like Babar who tops the charts and we need to enjoy him, cherish him. We don’t want to send him to panic mode,” said Butt further.
“There’s no comparison. It’s like comparing Wasim Akram and Shaheen Afridi. It’s not right,” Butt stated.