A rare hundred by a Pakistan captain
Azhar Ali became the eighth Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred and the first in five years
Bishen Jeswant22-Apr-2015Azhar Ali’s century in the 3rd ODI against Bangladesh made him the eighth Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred. India have had the most such captains, 11, with Australia having 10. While this difference may not seem stark, it is interesting that captains from India and Australia have cumulatively scored 78 ODI centuries (39 each) while Azhar Ali’s century is only the 10th by a Pakistan captain.
| Team | Mat | 100 | Mat/100 | Players* | Runs | Ave |
| India | 880 | 39 | 22.56 | 11 | 27378 | 41.16 |
| Australia | 856 | 39 | 21.95 | 10 | 25970 | 36.99 |
| New Zealand | 682 | 19 | 35.89 | 9 | 17920 | 32.64 |
| England | 644 | 17 | 37.88 | 9 | 17333 | 31.74 |
| West Indies | 731 | 18 | 40.61 | 8 | 17676 | 33.73 |
| Pakistan | 840 | 10 | 84.00 | 8 | 19704 | 32.84 |
| Sri Lanka | 752 | 21 | 35.81 | 7 | 21857 | 35.13 |
| South Africa | 536 | 19 | 28.21 | 4 | 15846 | 39.71 |
*The last Pakistan captain to score an ODI hundred was Shahid Afridi, also against Bangladesh, during the 2010 Asia Cup. In fact, Afridi scored two centuries during that Asia Cup. The only other Pakistan batsman to score two hundreds as captain was Inzamam-ul-Haq.
| Player | Mat | Runs | Ave | SR | 100s |
| RT Ponting | 230 | 8497 | 42.91 | 83.41 | 22 |
| SC Ganguly | 147 | 5104 | 38.66 | 76.2 | 11 |
| ST Jayasuriya | 118 | 4377 | 38.73 | 88.05 | 10 |
| AB de Villiers | 68 | 3418 | 69.75 | 111.8 | 9 |
| GC Smith | 150 | 5416 | 38.96 | 83.06 | 8 |
The only captain to score more than 20 ODI centuries is Ricky Ponting (22), followed by Saurav Ganguly (11) and Sanath Jayasuriya (10). Two among the top-four regular batsmen to captain their respective teams in the most ODIs without scoring a single century are from Pakistan – Misbah-ul-Haq (87) and Javed Miandad (62). The others are Hansie Cronje (138) and Habibul Bashar (69).
| Player | Runs | Opposition | Ground | Year |
| Imran Khan | 102* | v Sri Lanka | Leeds | 1983 |
| Rameez Raja | 104* | v West Indies | Sharjah | 1995 |
| Aamer Sohail | 105 | v India | Sharjah | 1996 |
| Saeed Anwar | 115 | v Sri Lanka | Nairobi (Gym) | 1996 |
| Inzamam-ul-Haq | 122 | v India | Karachi | 2004 |
| Inzamam-ul-Haq | 123 | v India | Lahore | 2004 |
| Shoaib Malik | 125* | v India | Karachi | 2008 |
| Shahid Afridi | 109 | v Sri Lanka | Dambulla | 2010 |
| Shahid Afridi | 124 | v Bangladesh | Dambulla | 2010 |
| Azhar Ali | 101 | v Bangladesh | Dhaka | 2015 |
Azhar Ali has scored 209 runs in this series making it only the ninth instance of a Pakistan captain scoring 200-plus runs in a bilateral ODI series. Inzamam has achieved this feat on three occasions while Misbah has done it twice.
