There were signs early on that indicated a significant knock. Of his third ball – 145kph and shaping away – Babar Azam carved Alzarri Joseph for a boundary between backward point and deep third. It was the shot of a man in pristine touch.
PSL 2026 has been a prolific season for Babar. He has scored crucial runs for Peshawar Zalmi on all types of surfaces, a welcome change for a player who had been struggling, shackled by the weight of expectations and intense scrutiny. Earlier this season, Pakistan’s batting coach Hanif Malik had told ESPNcricinfo how “there has been so much criticism that it has had an impact on him.”
This PSL has brought out a different Babar, liberated but also in control. It is not yet that Babar, who owned the crease and dictated terms to bowlers, but the change is visible. It is likely because, as opener, he is back where he feels most comfortable and has thrived the most. All 12 of Babar’s T20 centuries and almost 75% of his runs have been scored as opener. Being sandwiched between Mohammad Haris and Kusal Mendis has allowed him to anchor, rather than be the aggressor.
Mendis is in the form of his life. He’s the leading run-scorer in his maiden PSL and his partnership with Babar is one of the biggest stories of this season. No pair has more runs than their 557 in six innings, with three century stands. Their 191-run stand against Karachi Kings was the highest partnership in PSL history. The most striking feature has been Babar’s willingness to support Mendis, rather than take centrestage himself.
Their partnership against Quetta Gladiators on Sunday night was no different. Babar took the backseat after Mendis smoked Jahandad Khan, Joseph, and Saud Shakeel for boundaries early in the innings. Mendis scored 62% of the 135 they put on as Babar held his end. The Zalmi captain moved at his own pace in that stand, scoring 58 off 35 as Mendis blasted 84 off 44. Babar only put his innings in top gear – smashing his last 37 runs off 12 balls – after Mendis got out at the start of the 15th over.
“My plan is to build an innings [as an anchor with Mohammad Haris and Kusal Mendis around me],” Babar told the broadcaster after the match. “If the ball is in my zone, I utilise it. At times, your partner is in better form than you are and he is dominating the opposition more and putting them under pressure so you provide him strike as I did with Mendis. I took it upon myself to attack once Mendis got out by looking to score 15-20 runs each over.”
High-profile players are scrutinised excessively, sometimes unnecessarily, when their form declines. There were questions around Babar’s ability to strike the ball and his overall match fitness as his form deteriorated. There have been questions about whether he should be playing this format at all. Babar has given his response this season, as he did towards the end of the innings. He launched Abrar Ahmed for two sixes over midwicket and clubbed Usman Tariq in the next over, in the same region, but this time against the wind and across the longer boundary.
This has been a quiet PSL for Tariq, raising concerns that he has been found out. He remained wicketless in three of the first six matches and had only four wickets before he took 3 for 18 against Lahore Qalandars in Gladiators’ last match. He says the batters are not attacking him, but he could not do much during Babar’s onslaught. Babar smacked him for a four and six down the ground later in the over. He waited through Tariq’s pause, rocked back, and timed his swings perfectly.
Almost as important as the boundaries was that Babar faced only one dot in 52 balls. Remarkably, that was the first time a batter had played out a single dot ball in an innings of 50-plus balls in T20s. It underscored a marked shift in his approach towards the game, as he has been regularly criticised for playing too many dot balls.
“Strike rotation is very important in every format,” Babar said. “You should always be looking to score runs. There can be times when the bowler is not letting you score boundaries and at that stage you can look to rotate strike rather than consuming dot balls. These things matter a lot for me and I don’t feel much pressure as I try to play less and less dot balls through strike rotation. You cannot be thinking about sixes and fours on each ball. You may hit them on your good day, but it would be difficult to do so every day.”
He ran 31 singles, nine doubles, and one three, and recent questions around his fitness were firmly answered when he ran back to the striker’s end to complete an improbable double on the last ball of the innings to bring up his century.
“You are relieved on the inside when you achieve something and I felt that today,” Babar said. “There was a lot of hard work behind it and I worked on my fitness as well. I had self-belief. I cherish all my performances, but there is a different [level of] relief when you perform after a while and people had been anticipating it.”
It has been a long wait: two years and 67 innings since he last scored a hundred in T20s. That it happened to be his fastest century in the PSL may reassure his fans that he still has it in him.
