A rare hundred by a Pakistan captain

Azhar 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.

Teamwise performance of captains in ODIs

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

*Number of players to have scored ODI centuries as captain

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.

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).

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.