Pakistan slumped to their eighth consecutive away Test defeat on July 29, losing by 90 runs to West Indies in Tarouba, and captain Babar Azam’s cautious unbeaten 58 did little to silence a growing chorus of critics asking whether the country’s most celebrated batter has become its biggest liability. The question sounds extreme. But after a three year stretch defined by an 807 day wait for an ODI century, a benching during Pakistan’s own T20 World Cup campaign, and a resignation-triggering row inside the selection committee, it is no longer a question fans are afraid to ask out loud.

The West Indies defeat encapsulated the frustration. Chasing a modest target of 211, Pakistan collapsed to 25 for 3 inside the opening hour after Shan Masood, the centurion of the first innings, was ruled out of opening due to a finger injury and Babar was forced in at number three earlier than planned. He steadied things briefly with Mohammad Rizwan before Rizwan fell at 46 for 4, and from that point the innings needed a senior batter to dominate the strike and shield the tail. Instead, Babar rotated singles, allowing debutant-level batters at nine and ten to face the bulk of a hostile West Indies attack. Pakistan folded to 71 for 9 before a last wicket stand dragged the total past three figures. Babar’s own scoring rate during his partnership with Mohammad Abbas barely cleared a run a ball. He finished with the highest score of the innings and still could not escape blame for how he got there.

This is the pattern that has come to define Babar’s international career over the last several seasons. The numbers on the scoreboard often look respectable. The manner in which they arrive rarely satisfies anyone. He returned to the Test captaincy this month after the Pakistan Cricket Board sacked Shan Masood following a dismal run, taking charge of a side that has now lost eight straight Tests away from home and sits at the bottom of the World Test Championship table. Babar himself admitted after the Tarouba defeat that Pakistan’s batting simply was not up to the mark, a rare moment of public self-criticism from a player usually careful with his words.

The most damaging chapter came earlier this year, during Pakistan’s T20 World Cup campaign, when the team management dropped Babar for the must-win Super 8 fixture against Sri Lanka. It was a startling decision. Babar remains the format’s leading run scorer in history, yet the side that built its identity around his batting decided it needed more firepower than he could offer. Reports at the time suggested doubts had crept in about his commitment to the game, fuelled by speculation that he pulled out of the National T20 Cup before his name was quietly removed from a provincial squad sheet.

Behind the scenes, the unease reportedly ran even deeper. Former Pakistan captain and national selector Mohammad Yousuf later revealed that his own resignation from the selection panel was not voluntary in the way it was first reported. Yousuf said he pushed to have Babar dropped after identifying what he called a clear technical decline built up over three years, only to face fierce resistance from decision makers unwilling to sideline the country’s biggest star. He walked away from the role rather than compromise on an assessment he believed was obvious to anyone watching closely. With an 807 day gap between ODI centuries still hanging over him, Yousuf’s diagnosis of decline is not easily dismissed as noise.

Yet the case against Babar is complicated by what he did just months earlier in the Pakistan Super League. His 2026 campaign for Peshawar Zalmi was, by any measure, one of the finest individual seasons the tournament has seen. He finished as the leading run scorer with 588 runs, striking two centuries and three fifties, and equalled a season record that had stood since 2022. His fastest PSL century came against Islamabad United, a 59 ball 103 that carried Zalmi into the final with a commanding win, and Player of the Match honours followed him through the tournament. This was a dramatic reversal from the previous season, when he managed only 288 runs, his worst PSL return since the competition began in 2016, a slump that coincided with Zalmi missing the playoffs for the first time.

That contrast is at the heart of why the “worst player” question resists a simple answer. In franchise cricket, free of the captaincy burden and the weight of an entire nation’s expectations, Babar looks like the player who once dominated world cricket rankings across all three formats. In the international arena, wearing the captain’s armband and carrying Pakistan’s batting order on his back, he has looked hesitant, risk averse, and increasingly a target for blame whenever the team stumbles.

Former India batter Robin Uthappa recently offered a different explanation altogether, arguing that Babar simply lacks the mental resilience of players like Virat Kohli when it comes to absorbing sustained public criticism. Uthappa pointed to the relentless online abuse directed at Babar from former Pakistani cricketers and fans alike, suggesting the scrutiny itself may be feeding the very slump it claims to diagnose. Babar has addressed this pressure directly in recent interviews, saying he deliberately filters out negativity and focuses only on what helps his performance, even as he acknowledged the criticism exists and will not stop.

What emerges is not a portrait of Pakistan’s worst player, but of its most scrutinized one. A batter with 4,481 Test runs, nine centuries, and 31 half centuries across 62 matches does not fit that label by any statistical measure. But leadership, timing, and the specific failures that have piled up since Pakistan’s T20 World Cup exit have created a narrative that now follows him into every innings. Whether Babar silences that narrative with the bat in West Indies, or whether it hardens further with each passing series, will likely decide how this chapter of his captaincy is remembered. For now, the question in the headline remains exactly that, a question, not a verdict.