For years, Babar Azam treated Test hundreds like routine paperwork. He turned up, he batted, he cashed in. Nine Test centuries by the age of 28, a golden 2022 crowned by that majestic 161 against New Zealand in Karachi. At that point, it felt less like form and more like a permanent state of being.
Then the runs kept coming – but the hundreds stopped.
From Karachi high to a stubborn drought
December 26, 2022. Karachi. Babar carves New Zealand for 161, his ninth Test century, completing a year of 1,184 Test runs and four hundreds. It looked like the start of a long reign at the top.
The drought began almost immediately.
In the very next innings of that same Test, he fell for 14. In the second Test in Karachi, he added 24 and 27. No crisis yet, just numbers below his own towering standards.
The 2023 tour of Sri Lanka offered little relief: 13, 24, 39. Starts, but nothing that forced a game open. Then came Australia, the stage where great batters usually roar. Babar scratched his way to 21, 14, 1, 41, 26 and 23 across three Tests. The 41 in Melbourne was, briefly, his highest score of the post-161 era, another innings that promised much and delivered only frustration.
The pattern was set. He was still Babar Azam – elegant, technically sound, always looking one innings away. That one innings refused to arrive.
2024: When a slump turns into a problem
By 2024, the lean run stopped being a curiosity and started to feel like a weight.
Against Bangladesh, he managed 0, 22, 31 and 11 in two Tests. No rhythm, no control over the narrative. Then came England at home, the sort of series a captain-batter uses to stamp authority.
In Multan, on a surface where Shan Masood and Abdullah Shafique both reached three figures, Babar made only 30. Chris Woakes trapped him lbw, another innings cut short before it could stretch out into something substantial. That 30 kept alive an unwanted streak: not just no hundreds, but no fifties since that 161 against New Zealand.
The pressure kept building. Questions followed him everywhere.
The response finally flickered in South Africa at the end of the year. At Centurion, he reached 50 – his first Test fifty since Karachi 2022. It felt like a small dam breaking. At Cape Town, he went further: 58 in the first innings, 81 in the second. He looked closer to his old self, controlling length, driving with authority, riding the bounce.
But again, just short. Nineteen runs away from that 10th Test century. Nineteen runs away from ending a conversation that had gone on far too long.
2025: Better numbers, same story
He carried that 81 into 2025 as one of the year’s standout efforts. Across the two-Test series in South Africa, he piled up 193 runs, three fifties, a best of 81. The volume returned. The conversion did not.
Across the calendar year, his Test numbers improved markedly compared to 2023 and 2024. He looked more secure, more productive. Yet every time he settled in, the innings ended before three figures. His top score in 2025 stayed stuck at 81.
For a lesser player, that might have been a triumph. For Babar, it was a reminder of what remained missing.
2026: Run out on 88 – the one that got away
Then came West Indies in 2026, and with it the most painful near-miss of all.
At Port of Spain in the second Test, Babar finally seemed to be crafting the innings everyone had waited for. He moved to 88, just 12 runs shy of the milestone that had haunted him for almost four years. The technique held. The temperament held.
The running did not.
A mix-up with his partner left him stranded, Brandon King’s direct involvement ending the innings in the most agonising way for a batter in search of a hundred: run out on 88. Another almost. Another chance gone.
He had already made 58 not out in the first Test chase, an innings that suggested he was ready to drag Pakistan back into contests again. Pakistan still lost that match by 90 runs. Across the two Tests, Babar compiled 193 runs, including the 88 and an unbeaten 24. The volume nudged him back into the ICC Test top 10.
The rankings moved. The century column did not.
Bangladesh again, another opening missed
Before the England tour, Bangladesh appeared once more as an opportunity to reset. Babar scored 68 and 47 in the two-Test series. Useful runs, important contributions, the kind that keep a middle order ticking.
Yet even there, on pitches where his class often shines, he could not stretch a start into the hundred that has been missing from his record since December 2022. The numbers looked respectable. The gap in his ledger stayed glaring.
England: injury, return, and fresh disappointment
The latest chapter in this saga came against England.
A finger injury ruled him out of the first Test at Headingley, where Pakistan were thrashed by an innings and 103 runs. From the sidelines, their captain watched his team unravel and knew the responsibility waiting for him at Lord’s.
He declared himself 90 per cent fit for the second Test and returned at the home of cricket, a stage made for statement innings. Pakistan needed their best batter. Babar needed himself.
England’s bowlers showed no sentiment.
In Pakistan’s first innings at Lord’s, he managed just 8. Josh Tongue drew the error, Jordan Cox completed the catch, and Pakistan crumbled to 110 all out. One innings, one more low score. The wait continued.
Chasing 389 in the fourth innings, Pakistan needed something heroic. Instead, they lost their captain early again. Jofra Archer hit the pitch hard, found pace and bounce, and forced an awkward shot that ballooned to Cox at third slip. Babar was gone for 6.
Two innings at Lord’s. Scores of 8 and 6. The drought not only intact, but deepened.
A world-class batter at a crossroads
Seventeen Tests. Thirty-six innings. No hundreds.
The numbers tell the story starkly enough, but they don’t quite capture the unease around them. Babar Azam is still good enough to make fifties under pressure, to average respectably, to climb back into the ICC top 10. He remains the technical reference point in Pakistan’s line-up.
Yet for a player once defined by his ability to turn starts into match-shaping hundreds, the missing milestone has become more than a statistic. It hangs over every innings, every leave outside off, every cautious start.
The next time he walks out, the question will follow him again: is this the day the 10th Test century finally arrives, or does one of the modern game’s most gifted batters keep walking off just short of where he used to live?
