The cricket universe was surprised yesterday after the eight teams participating in the Men’s Hundred 2022 ignored Babar Azam at the draft. Azam is the world number one batter on the ICC ODI Rankings and ICC T20I Rankings. He has done well in T20 cricket, but surprisingly, no team from The Hundred showed interest in his services.
Later on, it was revealed by some fans that the Pakistan cricket team will be playing many international matches in the second half of 2022. Due to that reason, Babar Azam would have been unavailable for the Hundred matches, and that is why, the teams did not draft him.
A source close to the developments informed to The News earlier today that Babar Azam did not apply for an NOC for playing in the Hundred, which showed that he had no interest to go to England for that tournament.
“Babar Azam never applied for the NOC for the English summer-that means he is not interested despite being one of the few overseas who are bracketed among the top category,” a source told The News. “He preferred to stay away from hectic commitments more in order to concentrate fully on the national summer commitment.”
Babar Azam will lead Pakistan in Asia Cup T20 and ICC T20 World Cup 2022 later this year
The Pakistan cricket team is scheduled to play international series against West Indies, Sri Lanka and Netherlands in June and July. After that, they will play the Asia Cup T20 tournament, followed by the ICC T20 World Cup 2022.
Thus, one can understand why Azam may not have applied for the NOC to play in The Hundred. Another reason could be that Babar would have been partially available for the tournament, so even the eight teams might have refrained from picking him and instead decided to invest their funds in players who would be available for the full season.
