Does Babar Azam score his 100s and 50s only against small teams? 

An oft-repeated idea in the Virat Kohli vs Babar Azam debate is that the Pakistan captain scores most of his runs, centuries and half-centuries against relatively weaker sides. The 2023 World Cup has only fueled that idea further.

Kohli, showing almost a second ODI peak, has scored five 50-plus scores to become the second-highest run-getter of the tournament. On the other hand, Babar has failed to impress. He does have three half-centuries, but they have all come in losing causes.

There have been plenty of controversies around the Pakistan team. The skipper's missteps while managing the bowling changes and fielding positions, coupled with some questionable selection choices, have mounted immense pressure on him.

It has reached a point where even his ODI batting record, quite unrelated to all issues, is being put under the scanner.

"Nepal, Netherlands, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, if he (Kohli) had played all these series, he would have broken Sachin's record already. He doesn't play such series only," former Pakistani pacer Mohammad Amir said on a YouTube show.

Amir's remark came in reply to an X user who asked whether Kohli was 'selfishly' consuming too many dot balls in the 2023 World Cup. The user felt Babar was often criticized more for doing the same thing.

The clip has gone viral on X.

It's unclear which Sachin record Amir was talking about here. But there are two popular ones - 49 centuries in ODIs and 100 centuries across formats - that are often talked about when people compare the two Indian ODI greats.

Amir seemed to suggest that had Kohli played against Nepal, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh as much as Babar has, he would have reached 49 ODI hundreds a long time ago. We've decided to test that hypothesis.

In Figure 1 below, we have compared how many 100s and 50s each player has scored against all opponents they have faced in ODIs. Both Kohli and Babar have faced 14, 12 of which are the same, and the 13th is each other for them. Apart from that, Kohli has played against the UAE once while the same goes for Babar and Hongkong.

The opponents are ranked in ascending order of the latest ICC men's ODI rankings for teams. Since the Pakistan captain has played fewer than half of Kohli's ODIs, we have used milestones/innings as our parameter.

Figure 1: ODI milestones according to the opposition.

The data shows that, in contrast to popular belief, Babar has a better milestones record than Kohli against England, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and West Indies. The Indian ace, on the other hand, is a clear winner in head-to-head Indo-Pak clashes and the matches against Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

In a clear third phase of the chart, the former has more milestones/innings against Zimbabwe while playing two more matches than Kohli.

One area where Amir's statement stands true is the comparison in matches against the Netherlands and Nepal. While Babar has three fifties and a century in five games against these teams, Kohli has only batted once against the Dutch in his ODI career and never against Nepal.

But let's test Amir's theory and use the four teams he named. Kohli has played a lot more matches against Bangladesh and has done much better than his counterpart.

Against Zimbabwe, the Indian maestro scores a century in every six innings. Out of Babar's 112 ODI innings so far, eight have come against Zimbabwe. The proportionate number for Kohli's 276 innings is 19.

But since Babar's debut, India have played only nine matches against Zimbabwe. Kohli didn't play any of them. Even if he had, chances are he would have scored only one more century against them. This would mean he still wouldn't have broken either of Sachin's records at the date of writing this piece.

We can't do the same comparison for Nepal and the Netherlands. Those teams never get to play a bilateral against India anyway, and India or Pakistan don't decide on bilateral fixtures. The International Cricket Council (ICC) does.

Virat Kohli vs Babar Azam - share of ODI runs

Figure 2: Share of ODI runs against each opponent.

Let's get into a bit more detail, and ignore milestones for now. Has Babar accumulated most of his runs against lower-ranked sides? Data shows otherwise here too, but it's a bit more nuanced than the previous set.

Let's divide the 14 teams into three tiers, as shown in Figure 2. Both players have different favorites in Tier 1, which is the compilation of the world's best ODI teams.

While Kohli has scored over 17 percent of his ODI runs against Australia, Babar has only scored 10.7 percent against the five-time World Champions. But the Pakistani batter has scored more of his share of runs against England and New Zealand than his Indian counterpart. The duo's share of runs against South Africa are almost identical.

If we just look at the total percentage of their runs against Tier 1 teams, Babar has done slightly better than Kohli. In a shorter period, he has thus been marginally better than the Indian legend when it comes to scoring against the 'big five'.

Tier 2 is where things start to get interesting. The Pakistani captain has scored 5.2 and 8.1 percent of his career ODI runs against Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, respectively. This is where most of his "minnow basher" tag stems from.

However, while Kohli has scored negligible runs against these two teams, he has accumulated a much higher percentage of runs against Sri Lanka, West Indies, and Bangladesh.

Even since Babar's debut, the ace Indian batter has scored over 30 percent of his ODI runs vs these three teams, compared to the Pakistani's 24.3. Kohli has, thus, collected more runs against Tier 2 teams than Babar.

Finally, if you look at the Tier 3 teams, the Pakistani batter has been a much bigger accumulator. If you just make it two tiers, with the top five teams being in the first and the other nine being in the second, we'd again get nearly identical figures.

Figure 3: Revised share of ODI runs against each opponent.

This data only shows what some of those debating about the two players would already know but won't admit: both are great in their own aspects and are different from each other.

Both have accumulated runs against top-tier and lower-tier teams. Had Kohli played more matches against Zimbabwe and Babar against Bangladesh, they'd still probably have had the same number of runs.