Babar Azam's Test form, read phase by phase before Lord's

Babar Azam had 4,674 Test runs at 43.68 from 64 matches as at 26 August 2026. That single figure hides four phases: a slow start averaging 23.75, a peak of 58.70 between 2018 and 2022 containing all nine of his hundreds, a slump at 24.86 across 2023 to 2025, and 77.00 from three Tests in 2026.

Pakistan reach Lord's on 27 August already a Test down, and expecting their captain back. Babar Azam missed the opening match at Headingley with a hand injury. Pakistan lost it by an innings and 103 runs inside three days.

Whenever he does return, the conversation will run through a single number: a Test batting average of 43.68. That number is accurate and close to useless. It is the average of four different players.

Why does a career average of 43.68 describe nobody?

Babar has played 64 Tests for 4,674 runs, with nine hundreds and 33 fifties, as at 26 August 2026. Split those innings by period and the career stops looking like a plateau.

Derived from his innings-by-innings Test list on ESPNcricinfo, checked 26 August 2026.

Every one of his nine Test hundreds sits inside the middle block. The first was 127 not out against New Zealand at Dubai in November 2018. The last was 161 against New Zealand at Karachi on 26 December 2022. He has played 18 Tests since without another.

What changed between the peak and the slump?

Two things, and both are measurable rather than atmospheric.

The first is conversion. Between 2018 and 2022 he passed fifty 31 times and turned nine of those starts into hundreds, a rate of 29 per cent. Since the start of 2023 he has passed fifty seven times and converted none of them.

The second is time at the crease. Balls faced per dismissal is a blunt measure, but an honest one — it says how long a batter survives, independent of how fast they score.

• 2016–2017: 53.8 balls per dismissal
• 2018–2022: 103.0
• 2023–2025: 47.7
• 2026: 114.5

A batter averaging 24.86 across three years is usually assumed to have stopped scoring. That is not what happened here. His strike rate over 2023–2025 was 52.17, barely below his career figure of 55.15. He was scoring at close to his normal rate and simply getting out sooner.

Is the 2026 upturn real, or a small sample?

Both, and the caveat has to come first: six innings is six innings, and two of them were against a Bangladesh attack at Sylhet.

What makes the run more interesting than the average is its shape. Three of the six innings lasted 84 balls or more, and the 88 at Port of Spain took 147. The occupation has come back. The hundred has not: 88 is still his highest score since December 2022.

There is one further detail in how he has been dismissed. Across 2016–2022, 18 per cent of his dismissals were lbw — 13 of 74. Since the start of 2023 the share is 27 per cent, nine of 33. That is a small enough sample to be noise, and it is exactly the kind of number that gets over-read. It is worth watching in English conditions rather than concluding anything from.

What does his record in England actually say?

Less than most assume, because there is so little of it. Babar has played four Tests in England, all before this tour: one at Lord's in 2018 and three in the 2020 series. Six innings, 263 runs, average 65.75, highest score 69.

• Lord's, May 2018 — 68 not out
• Manchester, August 2020 — 69 and 5
• Southampton, August 2020 — 47 and 11
• Southampton, August 2020 — 63 not out

An average of 65.75 in England reads as commanding until the highest score registers. Four fifty-plus starts in six innings, none of them converted — the same pattern that has defined the last three years, visible in his English record years before the slump began.

Against England as an opponent, home and away combined, he averages 53.83 from 14 innings with one hundred: 136 at Rawalpindi in December 2022, one of the closing innings of his peak.

How does the Test record sit beside his white-ball numbers?

Here the gap that has followed him for a decade shows up plainly.

Career figures as at 26 August 2026.

Twenty ODI hundreds from 140 innings, against nine Test hundreds from 118. The conversion habit that has gone missing in the red-ball game never left the white-ball one, which is a reason to be careful with the easy explanation that he has simply declined.

What is he walking into at Lord's?

A series Pakistan already trail. England won at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs, dismissing Pakistan for 171 and 135 either side of their own 409. Joe Root captained England. Salman Ali Agha led Pakistan in Babar's absence; Babar was named Pakistan's Test captain in July 2026, ahead of the West Indies and England tours.

The second Test runs from 27 to 31 August at Lord's, and the third from 9 September at Edgbaston. Both count towards the World Test Championship.

Whether he plays or not will be a decision taken on match day. He did a few throwdowns and some batting practice today. But we'll have to follow medical advice for it.

That was Mohammad Abbas speaking before the first Test, and it describes the honest state of the question. Babar has been assessed match by match since he was struck on the left hand in a warm-up fixture at Beckenham, compounding an impact injury first picked up batting against West Indies.

What is worth watching in his first innings back?

Three things, all of which the scorecard will answer without any interpretation:

1. How long he lasts, not how many he makes. Balls faced is the number that separates his peak from his slump, and it is already trending back the right way in 2026.
2. What happens between 50 and 100. Seven fifties since 2023 and no hundred is the single clearest gap in the record.
3. How he is dismissed. Lbw has crept up as a share of his dismissals, and a Dukes ball moving into the pads in England is the sternest test of whether that is a pattern or a coincidence.

Ball-by-ball coverage of the Lord's Test is on live scores once play begins, and the rest of the tour is on the match schedule. The full fixture list sits on series and tournaments, and ICC rankings — which move after every Test — are kept current on the rankings page.

Statistics in this article were checked as at 26 August 2026.

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