Pakistan had moved on from Babar due to his tepid batting.
As Pakistan put on another unimpressive batting display in the Asia Cup 2025 fixture against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of their former coaches, Mickey Arthur, expressed his disappointment with the absence of their premier batter, Babar Azam. Arthur served as the head coach of Pakistan between 2016 and 2019, during which he led Pakistan to become the top-ranked Test and T20I side, and was also briefly appointed as team director in 2023.
Pakistan had moved on from Babar due to his tepid batting, which didn’t align with modern-day T20 methods and how they wanted to play under Mike Hesson. Arthur took to his official X (formerly Twitter) account to express his surprise over the non-inclusion of the batter after the Men in Green were put under pressure by a relatively weak UAE bowling lineup.
“How Babar is not in this batting line up is totally beyond me!” posted Arthur, which gained ample traction from Pakistan accounts, especially Babar Azam fans.
Pakistan somehow strolled to a fighting 146/9 in their allotted 20 overs, with Shaheen Shah Afridi coming with a timely cameo in the lower order and made full use of the inexperienced bowling by the opponent. However, their top order again struggled to get going on a challenging surface, and their innings was stagnant for most of the overs.
It was not an easy decision for Pakistan to look beyond one of their premium batters, even if his strike rate was below par at times. Babar Azam was one of the most prolific run-accumulators and held one end tight, irrespective of the conditions, which made him hard to drop.
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However, Pakistan have done the right thing by removing him, given he didn’t even try to up the ante most of the time and would rather bat at a slow rate even on flat surfaces. Currently, Pakistan’s problem is a lack of skilled batters to succeed on tricky pitches, but they at least try to go hard, unlike Babar.
Their issues will mostly be in the UAE, which is limited to the Asia Cup 2025. The focus should be on the bigger picture – T20 World Cup 2026 – in Sri Lanka, where the surfaces won’t be as sluggish, even though they will also suit spinners.
The current Pakistani batting lineup and their methods will work more on those pitches, so the idea should be to persist with them after investing so much. Obviously, the skill issue is real, but judging batters, or even bowlers for that matter, based on UAE pitches has never been wise.
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