Babar Azam, the captain of Pakistan, was one of the top five players to get the greatest score during the league stage of the ICC World Test Championship from 2021 to 2023.
The second ICC World Test Championship has lived up to the hype, with historic matches, record-breaking bowling strikes, and hitters amassing mountains of runs throughout the cycle.
With just the final between Australia and India at the Oval on June 7 yet to play, nine batsmen have amassed more than 1000 runs in this WTC cycle from 2021 to 23. Just six batters reached four digits in the first edition.
Joe Root of England, Usman Khawaja of Australia, Babar Azam of Pakistan, Marnus Labuschagne of Australia, and Jonny Bairstow of England are the top scorers.
Marnus Labuschagne, Joe Root, and Steve Smith—the top scores in the 2019–21 cycle—were once again in the running this time, and they were joined at the top by a prolific Pakistani star and two resurgent competitors.
The top five players’ results in the league stage games are listed below;
1. Joe Root (1915 runs; England)
Root has positioned himself among the top five run scorers for the second consecutive World Test Championship cycle. It is likely that Root will continue to lead the records with 1915 runs from 22 Tests unless the Australia opener who is next on the list can play an innings (or two) of a lifetime in the WTC final, the International Cricket Council (ICC) stated on its blog.
The former captain of England maintained his form from the previous cycle into the current one, getting off to a fast start against India with three hundreds and a fifty in the first three matches. Sadly, Root had little help from his teammates, and when the last game was postponed, England trailed the series 2-1.
The following eight Test matches were a nightmare for Root as a captain, and he made the decision to resign. Despite the difficult circumstances, Root was still able to bat well.
With 322 runs, Root was the only English hitter in the top five run scorers in the 4-0 Ashes loss in Australia. Root got two century in the series against the West Indies, but the team lost the match 1-0.
Root continued to demonstrate his value as a top red-ball hitter when the pressure of captaincy was eased and the new “Bazball” era started.
Root scored three hundreds (two against New Zealand and one against India) and a half-century in the first four games he played while captaining the team for Ben Stokes.
Root had amassed enough runs to separate himself from the other players in the run-scoring statistics, even if he was unable to sustain such high standards until the end of the competition.
2. Usman Khawaja (1608 runs) of Australia
Khawaja’s comeback to Test cricket has been one of the most inspiring in recent memory. He took advantage of an improbable recall during The Ashes to establish himself as a cornerstone of Australia’s table-topping performance in 16 WTC cycle matches.
The left-comeback hander’s to the opening position against England in Sydney was a dream come true as he scored two hundreds (137 and 101*).
Khawaja continued his strong play in Pakistan, where he set a very high record for runs scored (397 in three matches), boasting two hundreds and as many fifty-plus scores.
Although not scoring well in the following few Test matches, Khawaja, 36, remained a reliable presence at the top of the order.
Khawaja did able to round out the WTC cycle on a positive note, scoring a career-best 195* against South Africa before going on to score two fifties and a hundred on extremely difficult Indian surfaces during the Border-Gavaskar series.
3. Babar Azam (1527 runs) from Pakistan
Babar played brightly for his squad and once again shown to the world why he is among the finest in the industry during the course of 14 Tests in the cycle, despite the fact that Pakistan and their skipper may have had a forgettable WTC campaign.
Babar’s WTC season got off to a very slow start by his typical standards, hitting just three fifties in the first five Test matches. But Babar came up to deliver the finest Test innings of his career so far when Pakistan most needed him.
On a difficult Karachi track with a goal of 506, Babar led Pakistan from a sure loss to the brink of an unachievable triumph before ultimately settling for an exciting tie. Babar began his marathon after lunch on day four and continued it until after tea on day five, when he agonizingly came short of a double century with 196, the seventh-highest individual total in a Test match’s fourth innings.
Babar continued to build on his success in his subsequent games, scoring seven fifties and two hundreds in his subsequent six Tests. Sadly, in the series against Australia, Sri Lanka, and England, Pakistan only managed one victory.
On Boxing Day in Karachi, the top-order superstar gave yet another outstanding effort against New Zealand to save Pakistan in the first innings. Babar’s 161 helped Pakistan go from 110/4 to a final score of 438 with Sarfaraz Ahmed and Agha Salman by his side.
4. Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne, 1509 runs
With lots of runs in 19 Tests during the current cycle, Labuschagne is the second batter, after Joe Root, to maintain a position in the top five run scorers list from the World Test Championship’s previous season.
The vivacious Aussie got off to a strong start in the WTC cycle against longtime rivals England, placing second in the Ashes with 335 runs, including a century in Adelaide and two fifty-pluses.
Labuschagne had a magical run against Sri Lanka and the West Indies that included a double century and three centuries in three games after a rather uneventful tour of Pakistan.
In the first Test against the West Indies, Labuschagne made history by being only the eighth player in Test cricket to record a double century and a century (204 and 104*) in the same Test match.
He quickly backed it up with strong performances in India’s Border-Gavaskar series and the last Test match at home against South Africa.
With his miraculous double against the West Indies, the 28-year-old soared to the top of the MRF Tyres Test Batting Rankings, where he has remained ever since.
5. Jonny Bairstow (1285 runs) from England
After a rocky start to the WTC cycle that saw in the middle-order batsman being dropped from the Test team before making a stunning recovery, Bairstow had a bittersweet 15-match season. But, as Bairstow was in the middle of a dream run, a fluke accident brought everything to an abrupt end.
Bairstow was benched from the first three Ashes games after recording only one score of 50 or more against India. In the second game following his comeback, he surged back with a stunning 113 in the final Test in Sydney.
With the birth of “Bazball,” Test cricket saw an incredible run, with Bairstow seamlessly blending in with the style that Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes brought to the squad.
From that point on, Bairstow produced five more hundreds, including a five-inning stretch against New Zealand and India during which he scored four centuries and a fifty.
When the strange accident occurred when he was playing golf in Leeds, the 33-year-old was in the best shape of his life. It ended not only his WTC season but also kept the power batter off the winning squad in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
