Slow and steady wins the race. But only when the quick one decides to nap mid-way through the race. What if the hare never slept? Would then our books have read ‘fast and steady wins the race’? Is it possible to be quick as well as consistent? For starters, no. Due to some conspiracy that the universe weaves, you can’t be both simultaneously. The quick ones have to break down at some point. Just as Babar Azam has. It has been 12 innings since the last time the right-handed batter scored a half-century.
In the ten innings Pakistan played as a part of the ongoing World Test Championship, Babar has only managed to score 200 odd runs at a sorry average of just 22.
They say Test cricket requires one thing for a batter to flourish; skill. If you have seen Babar bat for so much as one session of a test match, you would bear witness to the fact that skill is something the Pakistan top-order batter will not be running out of soon. His slump can also not be blamed on the conditions he batted on. Pakistan’s last two Test series were played in polar opposite conditions, one on Sri Lanka’s rank-turners and the other on Australia’s bouncy pitches. This only leaves us with one inference to satisfy all our questions; Babar might have dozed off.
Why don’t the numbers show Babar’s Test slump?
This makes sense because not only has he been one of the top scorers in the previous two WTC cycles, but he also has the highest batting average in the Test Championship so far, starting from 2019.
Mind you, he has maintained the top batting average despite averaging 23-ish since the start of the last year. But thats the thing about a stat like average. It’s not vulnerable to sudden changes, hence, keeping people believing that everything is fine, when most of the time it’s not.
For a player like Babar, going a few months less than two years without a fifty is a humiliation no less than any in the cricketing world. But fret not, the critics have not faltered in reminding him of that. The fact that Pakistan have yet to play a Test match at home this WTC cycle, strengthens the stance of those who deem Babar a home track bully.
The clock is ticking, Babar
But bullying the home tracks is the only option he has left to better his record, at least until Pakistan tour South Africa for a Test series later this year. South Africa, by a rather happy coincidence, is one of the venues where the Pakistani batter could turn many things around in his favor. But all of that is contingent solely on whether he really will do something to shift the paradigm. Something he has notoriously failed to do as yet.
In the Tests against Australia, many batters from Pakistan did step up to score big. Interestingly, a handful of them sit above Babar in the highest run-getters list of the current WTC including Shan Masood, Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Rizwan, and even Agha Salman. Add to that the fact that no captaincy nightmares are keeping him awake this time. While for a Pakistan player captaincy and performance are not the only worries, the 29-year-old seems to have acclimatized to minor doses of pressure.
So, given everything that has been stated heretofore, Babar has a fairly good opportunity to get back into his groove. And the sooner Babar’s Test slump ends, the better it is. Because more than any tactical decision, any major surgery, or any XYZ, Pakistan needs their best man to take the wheel. Their numero uno to, for once, do something for the memory. Like hitting the jackpot and throwing his career to the heights that it should have reached by now.
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