Champions Trophy 2025: 'Scores Only Against Zimbabwe' - Ex Pakistan Player Calls Out Babar Azam’s Lack of Intent

Former spinner Danish Kaneria has called out Babar Azam following Pakistan's exit from the Champions Trophy 2025, saying the star batter only scores against Zimbabwe or other smaller teams and lacks intent when facing big oppositions.

While he scored a slow-paced 64 in the opening match against New Zealand, Babar only managed to score 23 in Pakistan's biggest match of the ICC event against arch-rivals India. Pakistan lost to New Zealand by 60 runs and then lost to India by 6 wickets.

This performance and results followed by Bangladesh's defeat to New Zealand on Monday (February 24) knocked out Pakistan from the eight-team tournament even before they played their final group stage match.

Pakistan failed to step up with both bat and ball in their two matches. The batting flopped more as the likes of Babar and Mohammad Rizwan could not manage to get big runs. Rizwan had some form coming into the tournament, but Babar had failed to convert starts even in the lead up to the ICC event.

In the Tri-Series at home against South Africa and New Zealand, Babar registered scores of 10, 29 and 23 as Pakistan eventually lost the final against the Black Caps. And now, ex Pakistan spinner Kaneria has slammed Babar for dominating only against weaker opposition.

"Babar has not scored runs for so long But when he scores, it is against Zimbabwe or against smaller teams. When he scores against big teams, there is no intent at all," Kaneria told ANI before talking about Pakistan's batting overall.

"There is no depth in the batting. Salman Agha and Khushdil Shah make some contributions sometimes. Saud Shakeel is a technically correct batter. But Rizwan's bat seems to have stopped working. When the Champions Trophy squad was announced, one could see it getting eliminated pretty soon out of the tournament," he added.

Babar has not scored an international century since August 2023, when he scored 151 against Nepal in Asia Cup 2023 in an ODI. Since then, he has played 24 ODIs and scored 753 runs at an average of 37.65 with seven fifties, at a relatively conservative strike rate of 78.68.

However, this belief that Babar performs only against Zimbabwe or smaller teams may not entirely be true as the Pakistan batter has scored 11 of his 19 ODI hundreds against some of the big teams. While Babar has scored most ODI tons agains West Indies, he also has more than one century against Australia, New Zealand and England.