Babar Azam’s last five innings have yielded 29 runs: 4,4,0,6,15. He had couple of fifties in New Zealand series before the world cup but had a dry patch before that as well.
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What is going wrong? Misbah-ul-Haq reckons it’s pressure and Shoaib Malik thinks Babar has failed to adjust his game to the bouncier conditions in Australia.
“I would say he had to tweak his way of batting. Conditions were different there. In subcontinent, when your both feet are planted down, you can still play and manage. But in Australia, you need to be more decisive with front or back foot. How and when you transfer weight is also important. If you have come out on the front foot and it’s a short of length ball, it becomes to difficult to deal in Australian conditions,” Shoaib Malik told A Sports.
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“The back leg becomes key, the weight has to go back a bit. The back leg needs to move a touch. He has to make that adjustment,” Malik said.
Speaking before Malik, Misbah reckoned it was a combination of factors.
“It could be many things. Most important is that his recent form wasn’t great. There was no continuity like the way he is used to. Then the team’s performance plays a role. You get under pressure as a team. It’s world cup, criticisms come, and all these things add up. The conditions in the three games hasn’t been easy for batting too,” Misbah said.
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A couple of days ago the two greats Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis had come down hard on Babar Azam’s captaincy.
“I requested him once or twice nicely, that please come down at number 3, we’ll try something different. Let (Martin) Guptill bat at the top, seeing he is an opener. And he (Babar) said I would not go down. If your captain plays for himself and is insecure, the team will suffer,” Akram had said on A Sports.
His co-panelist Waqar Younis echoed his former new-ball partners’ views. “The difference between being a captain and the leader, well, that’s the difference,” Waqar said.
