Former Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting offered advice to Babar Azam, the ex-captain of Pakistan cricket team, urging him to follow in the footsteps of Indian batsman Virat Kohli in order to get back his form, which has been missing for quite some time. Babar was omitted from the last two Tests against England due to poor performance. Pakistan won both Tests and captured the series 2-1, the first series win under the captaincy of Shan Masood. He has played 55 Tests so far in his career, amassing 3997 runs at an average of 43.92. However, he had gone 18 innings without a Test fifty since late 2022 and has also suffered a dip in form during the year he was first made captain, and even dismissed from the role after Pakistan exited the group stage of this year’s T20 World Cup in June.
“The main task is how they fit Babar back into their side. They’ve got to find a way to get Babar back into form and back into their (Test) team,” Ponting says in the ICC Review.
Subsequently, Ponting advised that Babar should consider a hiatus from the game before coming back ready to play, much like how former India captain Kohli did upon his return from a lean patch with the bat.
Earlier this year, Kohli took leave from the game in the course of the home Test series against England in order to attend to some personal commitments. Upon coming back, he played a critical innings that helped India defeat South Africa in the finale of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 last year; the returning of the trophy after a long drought of 11 years.
In 2022, a break was ‘forced’ on him as well but shortly after he returned, he was absolutely stunning over the short and long formats in the 12 months that followed. He scored a match-winning knock on the given situation against the arch-rivals, Pakistan, in the ICC T20 World Cup 2022, along with hitting his first international hundred after 2019 and subsequently had a fantastic ODI World Cup 2023 at home where he scored an unbeaten 765 runs and was declared Player of the Tournament.
“Well, when you examine (Babar’s) statistics, it is somewhat comparable to what we discussed about Virat Kohli earlier. At points in time – and I think that Virat was on record saying this – he took this short break from cricket in order to recharge and get whatever needed to be sorted out, in order, also, for him.
“For all we know, this could be exactly what Babar requires. Probably Babar has to switch off for a bit and stop overexerting himself. Put away the kit bag for a season and think about something else and come back hopefully recharged because we know that at his best he is as good as anyone else that there is. Hope we get to see that once more in the second half of his career again, Ponting stated.”
