Akhtar Told Pakistan the Truth About Babar. Now Tarouba Will Tell Us If He's Right.

Shoaib Akhtar has never been accused of diplomacy. But even by his standards, the verdict on Babar Azam ahead of the West Indies tour was surgical.

'You have made a superstar out of a player who cannot win you a game.'

Not 'struggling.' Not 'out of form.' Not 'needs support.' Cannot win you a game. That's not a hot take from a YouTube pundit fishing for clicks. That's a former Pakistan fast bowler, a man who once hit 161.3 kph in a World Cup, looking at the most talented batter his country has produced in a generation and concluding that talent, on its own, has been enough for Pakistan to build a brand around — but not enough to actually win Test matches.

The timing was pointed. Pakistan had just lost their last seven away Tests. Shan Masood had been sacked after winning 4 and losing 12 of his 16 matches as captain. The selectors, led by Aaqib Javed, had handed the captaincy straight back to the man they'd taken it from in late 2023. And Akhtar watched all of this unfold and asked the question nobody in the PCB boardroom wanted to hear: if Babar couldn't win games the first time around, why would the second time be different?

Here's the thing about Akhtar's quote: it sounds like punditry rage-bait, but the data backs him up. Pakistan have played 30 Tests since March 2022. They've won 11 and lost 15. That's a losing record for a team that used to dominate at home and compete everywhere else.

Their last away Test win came against Sri Lanka in July 2023. Since then: seven straight away losses. That's their joint-worst streak, equalling the seven they lost between 2018 and 2020. They were whitewashed 3-0 at home by England in 2022 — the first time that had happened in a three-or-more Test series. They lost 2-0 to Bangladesh at home in 2024 — a first in Test history. They were whitewashed 2-0 by Bangladesh again in May 2026, this time away.

Babar captained through the beginning of this collapse. Shan Masood captained through the middle. Now Babar's back for what might be the end — or just the next chapter of the same story.

The rot didn't start with Shan Masood. It started in Rawalpindi in March 2022, when Australia toured Pakistan for the first time in 24 years and were greeted with pitches so lifeless the ICC rated them 'below average.' The first Test produced only 14 wickets in five days. Mark Taylor called them 'roads.'

Here's the part that stings: former PCB chairman Ramiz Raja later revealed that the pitch strategy was Babar's call. 'I wasn't really bossing the pitch preparation,' Raja said. 'I was only listening to Babar... he came up with the strategy, and even though I sometimes questioned it, he was the captain at the end of the day.'

Pakistan lost that series 1-0. The defensive mindset — prepare dead pitches, bat long, hope the other team gets bored — became the template. When it stopped working, they panicked into spin-friendly surfaces that made their own pace attack irrelevant. Simon Harmer took six wickets when South Africa visited in October 2024. Bangladesh's spinners did the rest twice over.

The tactical trap was set under Babar's first captaincy. Masood inherited it, couldn't escape it, and paid for it. Now Babar inherits it back.

When Aaqib Javed announced the squad for the West Indies and England tours on July 5, he didn't pretend it was a difficult decision. 'We wanted to look for a captain who could lead the team in a much better way,' he told the press in Lahore. 'Shan's individual performance was good but as captain we weren't getting the desired results.'

Translation: Masood batted well but lost constantly, so we're going back to the guy who also lost constantly but at least has a bigger name. The selection committee was 'unanimous.' No other player was discussed. That's not a vote of confidence in Babar — it's an admission that Pakistan have nobody else.

They also dropped Shaheen Shah Afridi from the Test squad entirely, citing a need for 'more pace.' Pakistan's premier fast bowler for the last five years, the man who dismantled India's top order in the 2021 T20 World Cup final, was given an NOC to play franchise cricket in the Lanka Premier League while his country plays Test cricket in the Caribbean. The message is clear: Pakistan are rebuilding on the fly, and Babar is the only senior player they trust to hold it together.

Babar scored 100 off 151 balls against a West Indies Select XI in the tour match, with 12 fours and a six. It was controlled, rhythmic batting — emphasis on placement over power. Azan Awais scored a century too. Pakistan piled up 455/4. Everything looked functional.

But here's the problem with warm-up centuries: they prove you can bat. They don't prove you can win. Babar has always been able to bat. In 2023 and 2024, when Pakistan's Test cricket was collapsing around him, he averaged 21.36 and went over a year without a Test fifty. The runs dried up precisely when Pakistan needed them most. Then the runs came back in low-stakes situations — warm-ups, bilateral ODIs, matches where the result didn't carry WTC implications.

Akhtar's point isn't that Babar can't make runs. It's that Babar can't make runs matter. The warm-up century is evidence for Babar the batter. It's irrelevant to Babar the superstar.

The Brian Lara Cricket Academy is named after one of cricket's genuine superstars — a man who scored 400 not out to win back the world record, who made batting look like an act of defiance against gravity and logic and the concept of getting out. Babar Azam walks out there today against a West Indies side that is 8th in the WTC standings, captained by Roston Chase after Kraigg Brathwaite resigned, and missing Alzarri Joseph entirely because he 'declined selection.'

This is not an unwinnable match. This is not a hostile fortress. The pitch will offer lateral movement early and spin later. Pakistan have the batting depth and the spin options. Babar has a warm-up hundred behind him. The conditions are Caribbean-humid, not subcontinental-dead. If Pakistan cannot win here — against a rebuilding West Indies, on a ground named after batting greatness, with their captain in form — then Akhtar is right. The superstar label is just branding.

But if Babar can do what superstars actually do — impose himself on the game, set fields that matter, make declarations that take risks, score runs when the match is on the line — then the warm-up century becomes the start of something, not just another footnote in the decline.

Shoaib Akhtar's criticism isn't personal. It's structural. He's saying what the numbers already say: Pakistan have spent years treating Babar Azam as the solution to every problem, when the evidence suggests he might be part of the pattern. Great batters don't automatically make great captains. Great captains don't need dead pitches to feel safe. Great superstars don't go a year without a fifty when their team needs them most.

Today, at 10 AM local time in Trinidad, the toss will happen at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy. Babar Azam will walk out as Pakistan's Test captain for the second time. Behind him: 7 consecutive away Test losses, a sacked predecessor, a dropped pace spearhead, a former fast bowler calling him a fake superstar, and a team that has forgotten how to win outside its own borders.

In front of him: five days of Test cricket on a Caribbean surface, against a fractured West Indies, in a stadium named after a man who never once needed someone else to explain what a superstar looked like.

Akhtar made his call. Tarouba will make the final one.