Fact Check: Ravi Shastri NEVER hailed Babar Azam as 'best' compared to Virat Kohli

In cricket fandoms, the debate over who is the best batsman is an eternal one. Right now, the contenders include India’s Virat Kohli and Pakistan’s Babar Azam, two undeniably great sportsmen. But this debate seems to have now been settled by the cricketing great Ravi Shastri, at least if social media is to be believed.

An alleged quote by the commentator and former head coach of the India national cricket team began making rounds on social media. The quote said: “Babar Azam is the best batsman of this era. Kohli is nowhere near to him.” The archived version of a similar post can be seen here.

India Today Fact Check has found that the alleged quote by Shastri is fictitious.

Our Probe

Considering that Ravi Shastri was not only the former head coach of Team India but also the former captain of the Indian cricket team, it is only natural that such a comment would make headlines. Multiple rounds of searches, however, did not yield any relevant news reports.

Subsequently, we searched for Shastri's remarks on the two athletes. We found a Hindustan Times report from August 25, 2022, which quoted Shastri saying, “Sometimes, it is important that when we talk about this rest and all that. Later on, you realise that when you are back in the media, you are doing all television, people come out with star. One stat that emerged during a Test match against England, which shocked me, really. It said that in the last three years, when you look at the top players in the world, that is [Kane] Williamson, David Warner, Babar Azam, Virat Kohli and Joe Root, Virat had played three times the number of games as everyone else across all cricket.”

Before the 2022 Asia Cup, when Kohli was going through a rough patch, Shastri backed him and said that “mouths will be shut” if he managed to score a fifty in the first match. He also vouched for Kohli ahead of the ICC World Test Championship Final in June this year.

When we searched about Ravi Shastri's take on Babar Azam, we came across several news articles, none of which reported anything similar to the claim. Per an Amar Ujala report from July 2022, Shastri called English batsman Joe Root “the Best” against spin bowling followed by Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson, and Steve Smith. Notably, he did not mention Babar Azam, which sparked a controversy.

India Today has mailed Ravi Shastri's office and this article will be updated once we receive a response. It is, however, clear that a fictitious quote was falsely attributed to Ravi Shastri.