Babar Azam and the toe of destiny

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Stats from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru.

Do you see this toe? I have been looking at it for days. Hundreds of balls, slow motion, frame by frame, yelling enhance like I'm in a Hollywood movie looking for the killer. Is this it? Have I found the root of Babar Azam's problems? Is it the toe that did it?

Babar Azam has gone from being one of the best players in the world to someone who would be dismissed when he was miming his batting. If you blink as he takes guard, you've missed him in both innings of a Test. 

He was on the road to greatness with the bat, and now he can't even find a run on a road.

This is not the first time Babar has struggled in Tests. He strolled into ODI cricket, but crawled into Tests. After his debut in 2016, it wasn’t until 2018 that he played the way we expected. He scored his first hundred in his 17th match. But he made up for lost time, averaging close to 50 – the magic number – at the end of 2022. That has dropped by almost five runs in the last eight matches. 

Essentially, he’s had a career of three parts so far. Till 2017, he was barely a replacement-level batter. From 2018 to 2022, he was one of the best batters in the world. 2023 onwards, it seems like he is back to square one. How does that happen? How can someone be both this good and bad?

A consistent pattern is that he struggled both home and away during the periods when his average dipped. Naturally, he cashes in at home and the UAE, but also more than holds up on the road during his purple patch years. Before you say it must have been against weak teams, he averaged over 50 in 10 innings combined in England and Australia. Ironically, he scored two runs in as many innings in Zimbabwe.

The modern-day batter his career is probably the most similar to is Marnus Labuschagne. Both of them were among the top batters during the pace-playing pandemic from 2018 to 2022. When we look at their overall careers so far, they average really high at home but mid-30s away.

From 2018-2022, Babar had the third most runs after Joe Root and Ben Stokes. Among batters with at least 1000 runs, only Kane Williamson and Labuschagne average more. This isn’t all from scoring runs on Pakistan pitches, since his away average in this period is north of 47.

In these five years, only four batters had a match factor of above 1.5. Babar was one of them. He averaged 1.62 times more than the rest of the top six batters from both teams in the matches he played. Being 62% better than other batters in your matches is no joke. It does not suggest that he just played on good pitches for batting.

It does let you know he did this without a lot of support from the Pakistan batters. He has 1000 runs more than Azhar Ali. The likes of Abdullah Shafique and Saud Shakeel supported him well, but that was mainly in 2022. Mohammad Rizwan, who averaged just under 39, had periods of ups and downs himself. Imam-ul-Haq couldn’t score a run outside Rawalpindi. 

He wasn’t just scoring runs at home or on flat pitches. But what is going on now?

A good way of looking at it is by going through the control percentages. Kartikeya Date mentions in his article that luck is not the opposite of skill. It just represents the gap between the average outcome and the eventual outcome. 

When he started, he was actually "unlucky" because his control percentage was still good. From 2018 to 2022, he was naturally in a lot more control. If you look closely, his mark was a bit low in 2021. That was when he averaged in the 30s. But here’s the interesting bit – his control percentage has actually reduced in his latest form slump. If you watched him bat in the series against Bangladesh, you'd agree that he looked out of sorts. It wasn’t just a case of him getting starts and not being able to make big scores.

When he started out, he got out once every 6.3 false shots. For context, the global average since the start of 2015 is 10. During his high-scoring years, he naturally played more false shots before getting out because he was in for a longer time. Now, that has come down to 10.1 in the last year and a half.

Babar has never had a year when he averaged about 40. He has witnessed towering crests and sinking troughs. It's worth mentioning a couple of other batters that have had similar run-scoring patterns in their careers, because this is not how most professional batters look. 

Look at Michael Hussey’s early first-class career. He started like a future Australian player, and then was dropped by Western Australia. He spent a bunch of years struggling, and then suddenly unlocked a huge level that he carried into Tests. 

He averaged over 70 in his first three years of Test cricket, and then had a sudden dip. After that, he pretty much averaged 50 for the rest of his career except 2011. He had a mix of brilliant and mediocre years.

Denis Compton averaged over 40 from 1937 to 1949 every year. For the next four years, he was a shadow of his former self. He then rediscovered his form and averaged over 55 for the next three years, but only 25 in the last year of his career. Compton also experienced severe peaks and troughs.

We talk about rhythm bowlers like Mohammed Siraj, Stuart Broad or Shamar Joseph, who on their day are unplayable but are generally not as consistent. But the more I talk to batters, the more I realise some operate in a similar way. Compton, Babar and Hussey can be great, and they can be poor. They score runs in clusters. 

I’ve always believed in this style of player. These type of batters find a rhythm in their batting and make a ton of runs. But they can’t always understand why, so it’s hard to repeat. A player like Sachin Tendulkar can probably tell if their left shoulder is out of alignment. Many other batters can’t even always tell you what they do right when they are making runs.

Take Usman Khawaja, who is obviously a smart player. You would assume he would be able to work out his game. Yet, look at his first class career. He comes flying out the block and then can’t find a run. He gets his groove back, before losing it all again and then going on to be one of the best batters in the world for more than two years. Usman Khawaja is either a great Test batter, or an ordinary first-class player. Even he can’t completely stop it. 

If players could bottle it, they would. But many can’t. So they score in clusters, and then fail in them too. It’s possible that Babar Azam is equally clueless while he is or isn't making runs. How do you fix what you never understood anyway? 

And maybe the change is simply something small that he hasn’t picked up yet. 

When I looked at many of his innings over a long period of his career on NV Play, I found the toe. You can see how in 2017 and 2019, just after the ball is released, he has an open stance where his toe is pointing towards the bowler. Fast forward to 2024, and that toe is now closed off.

Maybe he hasn't even noticed such a small change. It is also possible that he made the change to overcome another issue, like reaching for balls outside off stump. Maybe made some runs but didn't realise this brought new issues. This means that he’s batting more one-eyed than two. He is staying closer to the balls outside off, but is closed off and more of an LBW candidate. 

The only way to know this is to check his dismissals. The percentage of LBW and bowled dismissals has now increased significantly. A potential reason for this could be that he was dismissed in the slips or keeper region 21 times from 2018 to 2022. It also makes sense as to why his balance is no longer as natural. Babar's batting was smooth as butter, now he looks like someone hopping on one leg after 24 hours without sleep.  

That is seam, what about spin? His struggles against left-arm orthodox spinners in red-ball cricket have been notable. In his golden period, Babar was dismissed eight times by slow left-armers, but he averaged a healthy 77.1.

Since the start of 2023, he has been dismissed four times in the six innings he’s faced left-handed finger spinners, averaging a meagre 14.5 runs per dismissal. He’s caught the KP bug, only worse.

The problem would again appear to be his toe. It just doesn’t come across to be level with his back foot. Against spin, his front foot is moving so far that often he’s closed off before he faces the ball.

Using NV Play, I could see he was usually at ease when he didn’t do this.

The ones he did brought him trouble. He is playing across his front pad as the ball spins away. 

Sometimes, he steps right across his stumps beforehand. Often the ball will be pitched inside the line of his leg, making it really difficult to hit.

He has basically started playing the ball behind his back a little, which no one’s idea of a good time. He’s adding a degree of difficulty he doesn’t have to.

Other than left-arm finger spin, he’s also a lot more vulnerable to right-arm pace nowadays. During his peak, he averaged 48.6 against it. Those are very good numbers, especially when we consider he’s faced it in Australia, England, South Africa, and West Indies – countries which have had really low averages for pace. 

But since 2023, he’s been dismissed seven times vs right arm pace. He has scored only 18.3 runs per dismissal. In his defence, it’s a lot tougher to face them in Test cricket, especially in the wobbleball era. But that was also the era he dominated. So again, it doesn’t hold up. 

Good length balls are the toughest delivery a batter can face. At his peak, Babar was dominating them, averaging well over 50. Those numbers make you think he’s figured out the hardest delivery in the game.

But then, his form dips. His lean patches align almost perfectly with his struggles against good length balls. There is also a difference. But he did dominate the most used ball in Tests before, and now it owns him. 

Babar has also had the issue Root did when it comes to converting fifties to hundreds. He has crossed fifty 35 times in his career, and scored only nine hundreds. It is an even more noticeable trend away from home.

Remember how I mentioned that Babar’s career trajectory in Test cricket is most similar to that of Labuschagne? Babar is less than 4 months younger than him, they’ve both played just about 50-odd Tests, and they both average in the 40s, dipping after prolific periods in the middle.

There is one major difference though. Labuschagne, who has played red-ball cricket for a decade, has taken the field in 152 first-class games. Babar, who actually made his first-class debut four years before him in December 2010, has featured in just 91 matches. Maybe in Babar Azam, we are seeing the first generation of players who just haven’t worked out their red-ball game enough. Back in the day, county cricketers used to play around 90 matches in three seasons. 

Clearly that isn’t nearly enough long format cricket for a professional batter who is nearing the age of 30. Time out in the middle is what Babar desperately needs, he is obviously smart, talented and usually a technically correct player. Long innings - and lots of them - might even subconsciously fix his issue. 

Being that he was on the trajectory of an all timer in ODIs, he could have fixed it there. But his ODI form has also dipped, albeit not to the same extent compared to Tests. An average of 46 since the start of 2023, striking at 84 odd, is not too shabby. It is also not Babar Azam, the batter who till very recently averaged north of 60 in the format.

One more thing that needs to be discussed is that the volatile nature of the PCB might well have contributed to Babar's decline. As per Osman Samiuddin, the PCB might have outdone themselves here when it comes to shit hitting the fan, even by their own chaotic standards.

We can all say Babar is out of form, but how many PCB officials have ever been in as good form as his current slump? Babar not making a run is still better than most of the guys who have been decision makers. 

Since the end of 2022, there have been four different chairpersons of the PCB, owing to the political quagmire within Pakistan, which is nothing short of a soap opera. In this same period, seven different individuals have had the privilege of calling themselves head coach of the men’s national team, and there have also been five different chief selectors. 

We hear a lot about how Babar doesn’t trust easily. Why would he? The PCB leaks like a sieve, and their main skill is blaming someone else. I am surprised he is not locked up in his room with the door against the handle in most situations. He has been on his own, as a batter, a captain, while a revolving door of people have come through. 

Has any batting coach been around long enough to bond with him emotionally yet, let alone bring up any technical issues? Somehow, he has been crowded and isolated at the same time. 

Babar has been at the centre of this power struggle, given he was all-format captain till the end of the 2023 ODI World Cup. How do you fix your technique when you’ve got daily questions over the rest of your job?

Pakistan can survive without his captaincy, but not his runs. I think it is just another blip before a bucketload of runs. If it’s the end of something important, Pakistan are losing something very special. Once you have batted at that level, it is very tough to find a replacement for that.

If Babar Azam could reach those heights once, the hope is that he could reach those again. Of course, the good and bad news for Pakistan cricket is that his batting is perhaps still more stable than all that goes on in the PCB. But when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter. Pakistan just need Babar Azam to score runs.