Babar Azam fastest to 5,000 ODI runs is a world record that still stands alone. On 5 May 2023, in the fourth one-day international against New Zealand at the National Bank Stadium in Karachi, Pakistan’s captain reached 5,000 runs in one-day internationals in his 97th innings, breaking the record Hashim Amla of South Africa had set at 101 innings. He marked the day with his 18th ODI century, 107 off 117 balls, as Pakistan posted 334 for six and won by 102 runs. No batter in the history of the format had reached 5,000 ODI runs in fewer than 100 innings before him.
The Day in Karachi
New Zealand won the toss and put Pakistan in to bat, and Babar walked to the crease needing 19 runs to reach the milestone. The single that took him to 19, in his 97th innings in his 99th one-day international, moved him past Amla and into the record books, and from there he simply kept batting. He added 50 for the second wicket with Shan Masood (44), 42 with Mohammad Rizwan, and then produced the decisive stand of the innings, 117 runs off 100 balls for the fourth wicket with Salman Ali Agha, whose 58 came off just 46 balls. Babar fell late in the innings for 107, his innings studded with 10 fours, and Shaheen Shah Afridi closed the innings with a seven-ball 23 not out, three sixes in the last over taking Pakistan to 334 for six. Matt Henry was New Zealand’s best bowler with three for 65.
New Zealand’s chase never recovered from Pakistan’s pressure. Tom Latham made 60 and the visitors were well placed at 184 for three, but from there they collapsed to 232 all out, Usama Mir taking four for 43 and Mohammad Wasim Junior three for 40. Pakistan won by 102 runs to take a 4-0 lead in the five-match series, and Babar was named player of the match, as the Pakistan Cricket Board’s match report recorded on the day.
Babar Azam batting in the second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo in July 2023
Photo: Nazly Ahmed, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Elite List He Now Leads
The list Babar Azam fastest to 5,000 ODI runs pushed aside is a roll call of the finest one-day batters the game has produced, as the ICC’s record table sets out:
- Babar Azam (Pakistan), 97 innings
- Hashim Amla (South Africa), 101 innings
- Viv Richards (West Indies), 114 innings
- Virat Kohli (India), 114 innings
- David Warner (Australia), 115 innings
Amla was not a soft record holder. For a decade his name sat at or near the top of almost every fastest-to list in one-day cricket, and beating his mark required a player to combine a heavy volume of runs with almost no slow start to a career. Babar beat it by four full innings. The Karachi innings carried a second record inside it, too: it was his 18th ODI century, reached in 97 innings, faster than anyone in history, with Amla again the man displaced, having needed 102 innings for his 18th hundred.
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A Career Built on Arriving Early
Babar was 28 years old on the day of the record, and he was already the world’s No. 1 ranked ODI batter, a position he had held for two years. He also became the 14th Pakistani to pass 5,000 ODI runs, joining a national list that stretches from Zaheer Abbas and Javed Miandad to the country’s most prolific one-day scorer, Inzamam-ul-Haq, who finished with 11,701. Where most batters on that list compiled their runs across long careers, Babar reached the mark at a pace none of them matched.
The Karachi record was one entry in a pattern that runs through his whole career. Earlier in his career the honours had already piled up: this site covered Babar winning the ICC’s Garfield Sobers Trophy as men’s cricketer of the year and his season as Pakistan’s highest Test run-scorer of 2022, and after Karachi he went on to share yet another fastest-to record with Amla, reaching 6,000 ODI runs in 123 innings, the joint fastest in history. Through all of it, the signature remained the same, a cover drive of textbook purity and a temperament that made milestones look like routine stops on a longer journey.
Babar Azam Fastest to 5,000 ODI Runs: The Milestone Ladder
Seen in sequence, the Karachi record was the middle step of a ladder Babar had been climbing all his career. He had reached 2,000 ODI runs in 45 innings, at the time the joint fastest by a Pakistani, and 3,000 in 68 innings, then the second-fastest by an Asian batter. The Babar Azam fastest to 5,000 ODI runs record followed in 97 innings, and when he later reached 6,000 in 123 innings he matched Amla again, the two of them sharing that fastest-to mark as the joint quickest in history. Milestone by milestone, the same name kept appearing at the top of the lists, usually a step ahead of the South African he had grown up chasing.
One Match, Two Pieces of History
The Karachi match is remembered for a second reason, which deserves only a brief mention here because it belongs to a team story of its own: the 102-run victory also lifted Pakistan to No. 1 in the ICC ODI team rankings for the first time since the rankings were officially recognised in 2005. Captain, century, player of the match, a personal world record and a team milestone, all in a single afternoon. Days like that come along once in a career, and Babar spent his making history on two fronts at once.
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Why the Record Has Lasted
More than three years have passed since Karachi, Pakistan’s younger batters have kept the record books busy, the national side has moved from the under-19 Asia Cup stage to the senior one, and the fastest-to-5,000 record is still Babar’s. That endurance is the real measure of the achievement. Modern one-day schedules give leading batters fewer innings than the greats of earlier eras had, and a sub-100-innings record demands that a player be world class almost from his debut and stay there without a dip for years. Batters of the quality of Shubman Gill have approached the mark since, but 97 innings remains the standard. Until someone matches it, the afternoon of 5 May 2023 in Karachi stands as the fastest 5,000 runs one-day cricket has ever seen.
Sources
- ICC, Babar Azam breaks ODI record as Pakistan climb to top of rankings, 5 May 2023
- Pakistan Cricket Board, match report and scores in brief, 5 May 2023
- Dawn, Babar Azam becomes fastest to score 5,000 ODI runs, 5 May 2023
- SportsAdda, Babar Azam milestone comparison (innings to each ODI run mark)
- Featured image: Babar Azam batting for Pakistan in one-day international cricket (Musharaf Keen02, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
- In-body image: Babar Azam batting in the second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo in July 2023 (Nazly Ahmed, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.