Babar Azam's Test Century Drought: A Long Wait for Redemption

For years, Babar Azam walked to the crease in Test cricket with an air of inevitability. A hundred felt less like an achievement and more like a scheduled event. Bowlers knew it, team-mates felt it, and the numbers confirmed it.

That rhythm broke on December 26, 2022.

On that Karachi afternoon against New Zealand, Babar crafted a majestic 161 – his ninth Test century and the peak of a golden year. He finished 2022 with 1,184 Test runs and four hundreds, the kind of output that cements reputations and bends conversations towards greatness.

Since then, the scoreboard has told a very different story.

From 161 to a silence that won’t end

The drought began immediately. In the very next innings of that same Test, Babar fell for 14. It felt like a blip. It became a pattern.

He followed with 24 and 27 in the second Test against New Zealand in Karachi. Starts, but nothing more. On the 2023 tour of Sri Lanka, the numbers stayed stubbornly modest: 13, 24, 39. Then came Australia – the stage where great batters often reaffirm their class. Instead, it extended the void.

Across three Tests there, Babar’s scores read 21, 14, 1, 41, 26 and 23. The 41 in Melbourne briefly looked like the start of something significant, but it ended like so many of his innings in this period: stranded in the space between promise and dominance.

By then, the wait for a 10th Test hundred was no longer a quirk of form. It was a storyline.

2024: When a slump turned into a problem

In 2024, the numbers grew harsher.

Against Bangladesh, Babar’s returns were 0, 22, 31 and 11 across two Tests. No fifty, no anchor innings, no escape from the narrative closing in around him. For a player who had once made big scores look routine, even reaching 50 began to feel like a distant habit.

The home series against England only deepened the concern. On a Multan pitch where Shan Masood and Abdullah Shafique both reached three figures, Babar managed just 30. Chris Woakes trapped him lbw, and that dismissal stretched his run of Test innings without even a half-century.

The gap between what he had been and what he was producing grew wider. The weight of captaincy, the churn of series, the constant expectation – none of it paused while the runs dried up.

South Africa finally brought a flicker of light.

At Centurion, Babar reached 50 – his first Test fifty since that 161 against New Zealand. It was a small number with a big meaning. In Cape Town, he went further: 58 in the first innings, 81 in the second. He finished 19 runs short of that long-awaited 10th century, but for the first time in a long time, he looked like Babar Azam the Test batter again, not Babar Azam searching for him.

Still, the milestone stayed out of reach.

2025: Better numbers, same question

He carried that 81 into 2025, and across the two-Test series in South Africa he put together 193 runs, three fifties, and that top score of 81. On paper, it was a strong return. In context, it was another chapter in a story defined by what was missing.

The rest of 2025 followed the same script. His calendar-year figures improved compared to 2023 and 2024. The rhythm of scoring looked healthier. Yet every innings ended short of three figures. His highest score of the year remained 81.

For a lesser player, such consistency might have been celebrated. For Babar, it only underlined the scale of the drought. He was getting close, repeatedly, but never quite stepping over the line.

2026: Run out on 88 – the cruelest cut

If one innings captured the torment of this period, it came in Port of Spain in 2026.

In the second Test against West Indies, Babar looked set. He moved to 88, within a dozen runs of ending a wait that had stretched to nearly four years. The balance was there, the timing too. The innings felt like a restoration.

Then came the mix-up.

A run-out, finished by Brandon King, cut him down on 88. No bowler’s masterplan, no unplayable delivery – just a misjudgment between the wickets and another chance gone. Another near-miss to add to the pile.

Across that two-Test series in the Caribbean, he scored 193 runs, including that 88, an unbeaten 58 in the first Test chase, and an unbeaten 24. Pakistan still lost the opening Test by 90 runs, but Babar’s output was strong enough to lift him briefly back into the ICC Test top 10.

Even the rankings, though, couldn’t disguise the central fact. The century still refused to come.

Bangladesh, then England: Hope, then a hard landing

Before the current tour of England, Bangladesh offered Babar another opening to change the story.

He made 68 and 47 in the two-Test series. Useful scores, important runs. Yet again, the conversion never arrived. Another start, another solid contribution, another innings that stopped short of the landmark that used to define his batting.

Then came England.

Babar missed the first Test at Headingley with a finger injury as Pakistan slid to an innings-and-103-run defeat. From the sidelines, he watched his team struggle and knew his return at Lord’s would carry extra weight.

He declared himself 90 per cent fit for the second Test. Lord’s, the stage. Pakistan’s captain back at the crease, chasing both a personal revival and a collective response.

England’s bowlers gave him nothing.

In the first innings, Josh Tongue drew the error. Babar edged to Jordan Cox for 8 as Pakistan folded for 110 all out. One chance gone. One more low score added to a run that no longer feels like a blip in a great career, but a defining chapter of it.

Chasing 389 in the second innings, the script turned harsher. Jofra Archer hit his lengths, hit his pace, and forced Babar into an awkward stroke. The ball ballooned again to Cox at third slip. This time, for 6.

Two innings. Eight runs and six runs. A captain back on the field but still searching for the player he used to be.

A great batter stuck in the waiting room

From that 161 in Karachi to the pair of single-figure scores at Lord’s, Babar Azam has lived almost every shade of a Test batter’s existence. The year of dominance. The long, arid spell. The teasing 50s. The 81s and 88s that stop just short of redemption.

Seventeen Tests. Thirty-six innings. No hundreds.

The technique is still there, the reputation too. The question now is not whether Babar Azam can score another Test century. It’s how long this drought will shape the story of his career – and on which day, in which city, he finally walks off with that 10th hundred and leaves this long, restless wait behind.