EXPLAINED: Babar Azam's Glaring Weakness Behind Slump In Form And Why Pakistan's Batting Is Flop In Cricket World Cup 2023

Babar Azam's slump in form is a huge concern for Pakistan. The Pakistani captain has been unable to play a match-winning knock for Men in Green so far in the ongoing Cricket World Cup 2023. With just one fifty in four matches, Babar has not quite lived up to the tag of being the World No 1 batter in ODIs. What's going wrong for him? If you look into it deeply, you will find that Pakistan's problems is, in fact, Babar's problem.

This has been spoken and written previously as well that Pakistan's batting template is years old. The Pakistani batters are way behind the modern-day ODI batting. Before we come to Babar's big weakness that is leading to back-to-back failures, let's revisit their overall batting performance vs Australia. 

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At M Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru, which has one the shortest boundaries in the country, Pakistan hit just 6 sixes. Australia hit 19. This is the same ground which sees the home team Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) struggle to register wins because they play 7 games here and defending even 200-plus runs becomes an impossible task. This ground is a nightmare for spinners. Ask Yuzvendra Chahal about it, who played seven years here for RCB and was smashed all over the ground helplessly. Glenn Maxwell, a sort of part-timer spinner for Australia, was not hit for a single six in the game vs Pakistan and gave away just 40 runs from 5 overs. No Pakistani batter went after him. 

_ Match Summary _
Pakistan fall short by 62 runs in Bengaluru.

We take on Afghanistan next on Monday.#AUSvPAK | #DattKePakistani pic.twitter.com/v4Cnre6y1E — Pakistan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) October 20, 2023

Openens Imam-ul-Haq and Abdullah Shafique took 21 overs to put 130-odd on the board in a chase of 350-plus. Keeping wickets for late does not guarentee a win in modern-day cricket but Pakistan somehow still thinks like that and paid the price in Friday's match. That was a slow start by modern-day standards from Imam and Shafique, who are also Test openers for Pakistan. 

After Shafique fell, Pakistan continued to lose wickets at regular intervals and never got going. Because the were scoring at slightly over run-a-over, the required rate pressure kept on increasing on the batters to follow. Other problem with Pakistan is that they have similar kind of batters from Number 2 to 5, who play conservative cricket. Babar, Mohammad Rizwan, Saud Shakeel can score quick runs but take time to settle in. Iftikhar Ahmed and Mohammad Nawaz can smash big sixes but they have not become complete finishers yet, at least in this format of the game.

While Pakistan cannot change their approach overnight, the key batters like Babar can at least try and bring their A game to the middle. The trouble for Babar, along with other Pakistani batters, is the shot selection against the spinners.

Babar Azam's glaring weakness

Babar has batted in four innings so far. On two occasions, he got out caught on mid-wicket, against Netherlands and Australia respectively. It seems the teams have done their homework on Babar. Netherlands' Ackermann, right arm off break, bowled short and quicker to Babar, who went on back foot and tried to hit through or over mid-wicket. But a catching fielder was placed over there and Babar ended up getting caught.

The Pakistan captain got out in the same fashion against Australia. Adam Zampa, leg spinner, bowled short and quick. Babar went on back foot again and pulled and ended up hitting it straight to Pat Cummins at mid-wicket. 

One can see that Australia and Netherlands clearly worked out that wicket. They have found out that Babar's pulls to spinners don't get the elevation. He does not want to hit it over the mid-wicket but keeps it grounded. 

One more question that needs to be asked is this: why are all Pakistani batters playing across to spinners? Pakistan batter Shoaib Malik, who is an expert with A Sports, pointed out the same in his analysis post the Australia vs Pakistan game. He said that when spinners are bowling flat and straight, like they did to Babar, the batter should look to make room and hit down the ground instead of playing across. Because while pulling or sweeping, the ball hits the stumps or the legs in front of the stumps if the batters fails to make the connection, which is always fatal. The batter must look to either step out or make room to hit down the ground in order to reduce the risk of getting out and also allowing quick flow of runs.

Clearly, there is a lot on the plate for Pakistan's batting coach, at the moment.