This is a big season of cricket for Pakistan, an unprecedented season in some ways. They play nine Tests, the most in a season since 1998-99. They host three bilateral Test series in a season, which they haven’t done before. They host an ICC event for the first time since 1996. Their two main grounds are undergoing the biggest upgrades since practically forever. And the PSL becomes the first league to go head-to-head against the IPL next year. It all feels a little bit seismic.
It is also a big season for Babar Azam, their premier batter and, until recently, the biggest star in the Pakistan game and unquestioned leader of all three national men’s sides. But in the last year some of that authority has gone. He’s no longer the all-format captain. He remains their T20 captain, though even that isn’t guaranteed.
He doesn’t quite command the team as he once did, and in Shaheen Afridi, for one, different centres of power are emergent. Once, Babar presided over a happy and united dressing room; the one he is merely a member of now isn’t quite as shiny, happy or smiley as the social media posts want you to believe.
Above all, though, and far more a matter for concern, is that some of the lustre has slipped from his batting, whence his authority primarily flowed from. In T20s, the debate around his batting is an old and tiresome one. ODIs don’t matter, until they do. It is, instead, in Tests where a sharp dip in productivity has really hit home. It has also passed, by and large, unnoted.
Which is strange because the numbers are pretty stark. From the start of 2019 until December 2022, Babar averaged nearly 60 in Tests. In that time, he averaged over 50 in Australia, nearly 50 in England and West Indies, nearly 70 in Sri Lanka, over 80 in Pakistan, and as if to troll the ZimBabar critics, only 1 against Zimbabwe. No statpadding here, thank you very much. Either the Fab Four needed to expand membership to include him, or someone within needed replacing.
Since then, though, he’s been averaging a far more ordinary 37.41. This run includes a solitary hundred and three fifties in nine Tests. In his last Test series, in Australia, he averaged 21, his lowest in a series (excluding the Zimbabwe series of 2021) since 2017-18, well before he had established himself in the side.
It’s not that he has looked out of form exactly, but it’s also true that he has rarely looked invulnerable. The Australia series is a great illustration of this. He got starts in five out of six innings, working really hard for them, but ultimately he could manage a highest of only 41. Four out of the six dismissals were to balls that hit like jaffas at first but which, upon reflection, revealed in Babar’s batting a lingering carelessness to incoming deliveries. Three of the six were bowled or leg-before, a mode of dismissal that is, perhaps, a thing.
In that run between 2019 and 2022, Babar was dismissed leg-before or bowled 11 times in 41 innings. Since then, it is eight times in 17 innings, nearly double the rate. Previously, it appeared to be a flaw only against left-arm spin, responsible for six of those 11 dismissals. In this recent run, more than half of those dismissals are to right-arm pace (and a couple of lbws to left-arm spin suggest that remains an issue).
And there are the unconverted starts. His scores since the 161 against New Zealand in Karachi in December 2022 are, in order: 14, 24, 27, 13, 24, 39, 21, 14, 1, 41, 26, 23. The consistency of those failed starts is uncanny.
It’s difficult to put a finger on why it’s happening. Is it to do with his concentration, that he gets set but is increasingly prone to lapses in it? It does bring to mind an early glitch in his Test career, of getting out around breaks.
