Babar batted a full session at Lord’s, and returns for a Test Pakistan cannot afford to lose

Babar Azam batted in the nets at Lord’s on Tuesday against fast bowlers, spinners and throwdowns, got through the whole session, and is now expected to play the second Test starting on Thursday. Pakistan’s bowling coach Umar Gul stopped short of confirming it. Nobody around the squad is pretending it is in doubt.

“Babar batted in the nets, faced fast bowlers, spinners and throwdowns,” Gul said. “We’re hopeful he will be available for the game and today he was looking good; he batted well in the nets. He had a full batting session.”

The finger, and the timing of it

Babar hurt the finger in the West Indies and was hit on it again in Pakistan’s practice match at Beckenham, which ruled him out of Headingley the day before the first Test began. Salman Ali Agha captained in his place and lost inside three days by an innings and 103 runs.

What happened to Pakistan’s batting in that match is worth stating plainly. England needed fewer than 86 overs to bowl them out twice, 171 and then 135. Only four times in their history have Pakistan lasted fewer deliveries across two completed innings in a Test.

Babar, meanwhile, had just finished the West Indies series as Pakistan’s leading run-scorer, with 193 runs for two dismissals and two fifties. A side that collapsed twice in three days was missing the one batter in decent touch.

Someone has to move

His return pushes Azan Awais out. Awais was lbw to Ollie Robinson off the first ball of the match at Headingley and made 9 in the second innings, which is not a case anybody has to argue against. With Babar coming in at No. 4, one of Shan Masood or Abdullah Shafique will move up to open. It is the sort of reshuffle a team makes when the top order has already failed, and it asks a settled batter to do an unfamiliar job in English conditions in late August. Pakistan have not left themselves a neater option.

His record here is the reason for the fuss

Babar has six Test innings in England and three half-centuries in them, at an average of 65.75. Across all 14 innings he has played against England, home and away, he averages 53.83 and has reached fifty or a hundred in half of them. Very few visiting batters of the last decade have a record in these conditions that reads like that.

There is a quieter detail in his return. Babar was appointed Pakistan captain immediately after their previous Test tour of England in 2020, and he was reappointed before this year’s West Indies series, but he has never actually led Pakistan in a Test in England. Six years after getting the job, Thursday is the first time he does the job here.

Gul is not selling it as a fix

To his credit, the bowling coach did not let the good news sit unqualified.

“We’ll have to learn from the mistakes we made in the previous game,” Gul said. “If you want to win a Test match, you have to perform in all departments. One can’t be carrying the other. But in these conditions, the responsibility lies more with the bowlers. Until you take 20 wickets, you can’t win a Test match.”

That is the harder problem. Pakistan did bowl England out at Headingley, but it cost them 409 runs and 89.5 overs, and by then the match was gone. Ali Usman’s 5 for 95 was the one bright spot, and Pakistan’s three seamers shared the other five between them at a cost of 300 runs. No returning No. 4 fixes that. Babar makes the batting card look like a Test side’s again. Whether the attack can take twenty wickets at Lord’s decides whether this series is still alive when the match finishes.

Stay across the rest of Pakistan’s tour of England