December 2022 was an outstanding month for Babar Azam. In just 30 days, Pakistan’s premier batsman smashed two centuries and three fifties against England and New Zealand at home.
However, if he had known what was about to come next, Babar might have happily traded some of those runs if that somehow ensured a better run in Test cricket.
It has been more than 600 days since Babar scored a fifty in Test cricket. That is a run of 16 innings without raising his bat, either home or away.
When Babar was the all-format captain of Pakistan, he did it all; score runs in all conditions and carry his team’s hopes with the bat and on the field.
However, his cricket began to unravel in 2023 as his form started to dip. He was pushed towards giving up the captaincy following a poor ODI World Cup which coincided with his batting form deserting him.
Now, while Babar is back as the white-ball captain of Pakistan, he is playing just as a batsman in Test matches. And just as his form has taken a turn for the worse, Pakistan have slipped alarmingly as a team, making Babar’s poor form stick out like a sore thumb.
Star India batsman Virat Kohli also went through a similar low in red-ball cricket. From September 2021 to March 2023, Kohli managed just a single fifty in Tests in 21 innings. But during that stretch, India remained a dominant red-ball team, qualifying for both World Test Championship finals, allowing Kohli to negotiate his lean patch that coincided with a change of captaincy. Kohli has now happily retired from the T20 format after helping his team to the world title this year, focusing mainly on longer formats.
No such luck for Babar though. The team in green are sliding towards the bottom half of Test and T20 rankings and now face the ignominy of a comprehensive Test series defeat at home to Bangladesh.
Earlier, Babar and the rest of the batting line-up had the luxury of some of the flattest batting tracks in the world while playing at home. But against Bangladesh, the pitches in the two Tests in Rawalpindi have been far from flat, with the second match especially exposing the flaws in the techniques of almost all the batsmen.
Babar has been found out against both pace and spin, with express quick Nahid Rana in particular keeping him on his toes. Such has been his loss of form that he has been getting out to the ball moving out and in, which points to vulnerability against any kind of quality bowling.
But it need not have been this bad. Pakistan contrived to lose a match that seemed headed towards a draw in the first Test and in the second had the Tigers tottering at 26-6 and still more than 200 behind. With a big lead in the second Test, Babar might have finally received the perfect stage to get back into Test form. What could have been a morale boosting series win on good tracks has turned into an inquisition.
Now there is a growing belief that Babar cannot be considered among the select group of batsmen labelled the ‘fab five’ across formats.
Joe Root, Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson remain the absolute pinnacle batsmen of modern cricket. They have plundered runs year after year and have a CV brimming with accomplishments that are the benchmark for future generations of batsmen, be it in the form of runs scored, centuries hit, world titles won, or just consistency.
Babar was almost there. And he might still be there in a year or so as he is only 29. Interestingly, Babar is the highest run getter in all formats combined over the past two years, even though a majority of the runs are not against top tier competition or in challenging conditions.
But a player can only go so far above the rest of his teammates. Continued setbacks in all formats, shambolic changes in leadership and an air of uncertainty about the standing of the team at the international level are bound to affect a player’s outlook and performance.
If one more batsman apart from Mohammad Rizwan had scored runs consistently over the past few seasons, maybe we would not be having this conversation and instead have allowed Babar the space he needed to sort his game out. Unfortunately, his batting stocks are at an all-time low and the team is not providing him a breather either.
So just like Pakistan team’s results, Babar’s batting quality is slowly drifting away and in dire need of a quick fix.
