Who Is the Best All-Format Batter — The Question That Never Ends, and What Babar Azam's Deal Reveals

Last night, in a rented room in Khulna, a fan's shadow danced across the wall while a podcast played on my laptop. Three cricket journalists were arguing — who is the best all-format batter? One reached for Test average, another for T20 strike rate, the third trusted the eye over the spreadsheet. I listened for nearly an hour. The argument never ended, but one thing became clear: the question is a trap. To search for the best all-format batter is to stack three different games on one scale — Test patience, ODI rhythm, T20 flash — currencies that were never meant to be exchanged. And right there I found the match again in a hostel room with no walls, where you hear not the scorecard but human breath and the sound of a question.

This is more than one podcast's quarrel. Around a Wisden episode, four separate stories have gathered. First, the "best all-format batter" debate, with Matt Roller, Gaurav Kalra and Daniel Brettig on the panel. Second, the ILT20 auction, described as "eye-opening." Third, the BBL privatisation saga, where the Australian Cricketers' Association chief Paul Marsh has raised his voice. Fourth, a leadership change in India Women — Harmanpreet Kaur stepping down as captain. Over all of it hangs a headline: "India's unfair advantage."

Notice that three of these four are stories off the field. Auctions, contracts, ownership, captaincy — these belong to cricket's economy and administration. Data from inside the game is almost absent. No innings narrative, no venue named, no average or strike rate. Yet these headlines hold our attention because they stir an old appetite — who is best, who deserves more, who is being denied.

Keep the timing in mind. The BBL privatisation story has run for weeks; it is not a one-day item. Harmanpreet's decision is fresh. The auction numbers are seasonal. Treat these headlines as permanent truth and you will be misled; they are signals of a moment that will age within months.

My first reaction was suspicion. I grew up in a time when writing about cricket meant scores and results. In 2026, from a cramped hostel room in Khulna, I wrote about the FIFA U-17 World Cup final — not the score, but the story of Phil Foden's silent father in the stands. I set tactics aside and trusted feeling, and that became my writing language. The habit still forces me to ask: are these headlines truly cricket's stories, or a device to hold attention? I write documentaries because scores are just the first draft.

Take the central question head-on. "Best all-format batter" is a title with no single definition. Each format's currency differs. In Tests, value is average and the patience of a long innings; in ODIs, the balance of average and strike rate; in T20s, almost entirely strike rate, plus the nerve to take risk in context. Put a Test double hundred beside a 30 off 20 and you are not analysing — you are forcing two currencies into one rate. The pitch is a poem with grass instead of punctuation, and each format is a different line of that poem.

So the debate never resolves, and that is both its beauty and its trap. Every generation produces a new claimant, and the argument restarts. When the question renews itself, the larger matter is who is raising it, and why.

Now to Babar Azam and Desert Vipers. The real significance of this deal lies not in on-field output but in market structure. Pakistani players cannot enter the IPL's door — a long-standing political reality. So those excluded from the world's richest league find one of their biggest homes in ILT20. The UAE league is Pakistan's near-home market, and a name like Babar Azam means a diaspora ticket. When Desert Vipers CEO Phil Oliver sits down to "break down" the auction, it is not sporting analysis but league marketing. The price is likely a marquee-star premium — commercial pull, not sporting scarcity.

Here I think of a letter. A transfer is a letter never sent, only forwarded. A player dropped from one league is not lost; he is forwarded to another address. For Babar Azam, that address lies on the Gulf shore.

And the "eye-opening" auction language? That is a description of a feeling, not a number. Without figures, no one can tell whether the prices are rational or inflated. One thing is clear: this kind of language fuses commercial value with sporting value — and that fusion is the great danger of today's league economy. The bigger the money a league pays, the bigger the question it leaves hanging: can ticketing, broadcast and diaspora viewership actually carry that cost? The UAE's domestic audience base is small, making the model heavily dependent on expatriate viewers and outside capital.

A larger shift is at work. Cricket's money and power no longer sit only with national boards. SA20, ILT20, and perhaps soon the BBL — IPL-adjacent capital is entering everywhere. A player's loyalty is splitting between board and franchise. That split is the mother of every future dispute — NOCs, rest windows, and commercial contracts.

The BBL privatisation story runs deeper. The question here is not ownership alone but the division of power and revenue. The presence of the players' association chief means this is not mere corporate finance but a labour-governance story. As the IPL franchise-ownership model has worked in SA20 and ILT20, the BBL is weighing whether to follow. When a mature league publicly debates its own ownership, it is admitting the pressure of rivals' valuations. If franchise capital enters, contract structures, player availability and the central-contract balance will all change.

Harmanpreet Kaur stepping down is the most solid on-field signal. A captaincy handover is usually not a verdict on form but a window opened for succession. It is preparation to rest a long-serving core and build new leadership — the start of a slow, quiet rebuild whose effect will show over two to three years.

And the West Indian in "red-hot form"? That is narrative, not numbers. Three good innings is not yet sustained form. This small-sample trap is cricket's oldest disease, and hype language makes it worse.

Now the headline that provokes most: "India's unfair advantage." This sentence is about revenue, not cricket. The BCCI's outsized share of global cricket revenue is an administrative-economic reality. But placing it as a question in a headline invites readers to take it as a story of sporting unfairness. That is the deepest confusion: turning an economic grievance into an on-field one.

The second uncomfortable truth is that the real aim of this discussion may be attention, not analysis. One headline with three hooks — a best-batter debate, a marquee signing, a grievance frame. It is deliberate packaging, not pure analysis. And when packaging dominates, viewers start to believe the question — though it was never meant to be settled.

Third, consider the silent stadium. In the silent stadium, I heard the ghosts of every crowd. Behind those the papers call "the market" are real people — class, city, diaspora, generation. The story of those for whom a contract is news never shows up in a number. And if cricket's economy forgets those people, even the best-batter debate becomes an empty ring.

In the days ahead, cricket's great battle will not be on the field but on the calendar. The biggest risk is multiple leagues pulling the same stars into the same window — that fatigue is the true cause of future injuries, not the medical staff. Read the auction prices, the BBL ownership and the leadership handover together and a picture emerges: cricket is moving from a single centre into a multi-polar market. The question is whether that market enriches the game or pushes the audience further away. What the replay never shows is the moment before belief — and we are standing in exactly that moment now.