Babar Azam doesn't pick his team. He just has to win with it

Most captains walk into a pre-Test press conference and talk about the pitch. Babar Azam walked into his in Rawalpindi on Sunday and explained what he is not in charge of.

The question was fair. Less than 48 hours before the first Test against Sri Lanka, Pakistan changed their squad again. Abdullah Fazal and Ali Usman were cut. Ali Shabbir, Saqib Khan, Aamer Jamal and Tayyab Arif came in, three of them without a Test cap.

That is the second squad shake-up in two Tests. Before the third Test in England this summer, Pakistan sent seven players home, flew in seven more, and sacked the head coach and the bowling coach along the way. So when someone asks the captain who picks this team, it is not gossip. It is the main question.

It is also not the first time. In September, Babar found out about the England purge from a PCB press release, like everyone else. This is his third stint as Test captain. He knows exactly how much the armband is worth in selection meetings.

Credit where it is due. Plenty of captains would have mumbled something about "full input" and moved on. Babar went the other way. He said he gives his input, and then "the selectors and coaches do their job". He even added that he couldn't say in public exactly where his role starts and stops.

Read that again. The Test captain of a full-member nation is telling the media his own job description is not something he can share.

That is either a man protecting a dressing room, or a man telling you, politely, that he has been handed a squad he did not ask for. It is probably both. Either way, it moves the blame for the XI off his desk before a ball is bowled. If Pakistan lose in Rawalpindi, the first question will not be about selection. He has already answered it.

The second big admission was about the table. Pakistan sit last in the World Test Championship with no route to next year's final, and Babar did not pretend otherwise.

"We are pretty much out of the WTC this year, so we're looking forward to the next one," he said, pointing to "more than half a dozen new players" picked with the cycle that ends in 2029 in mind.

That is a reasonable plan. It is also the plan Pakistan have announced before, usually after a bad series and a new set of selectors. The difference this time is that the captain said it out loud before the series, not after. If the kids play badly, the reset is the story. If they play well, it was the selectors' call. Babar has, quietly, given himself cover both ways.

Here is the twist. Babar's Test year is not actually bad. Ten innings in 2026, 405 runs, an average just over 50. A 68 and a 47 in Sylhet, an unbeaten 58 and an 88 in the Caribbean, 76 at Edgbaston.

What is missing is the big one. Four fifties this year, no hundred. Forty Test innings since that 161 in Karachi, nearly four years ago. For a batter who once looked like Pakistan's answer to the Fab Four, that is the stat that follows him into every room.

And the noise is coming from everywhere else. Sixty runs in four first-class games in September. A pair of unconverted starts for Lahore Whites this week. A duck in the tri-series final. When the white-ball and domestic numbers look like that, nobody remembers the 88 in Port of Spain.

He is right about the break, and the 2026 Test numbers back him. You do not rest a man averaging 50 in the format he is about to play. The problem has never been getting in. It has been staying in long enough to turn 60 into 160.

That is a fixable, technical, between-the-ears problem. It is not solved on a sofa. It is solved by facing 250 balls in Rawalpindi, which is about as friendly a place to break a drought as Pakistan has.

Sri Lanka will have a view on that. Their new Test captain Kusal Mendis said on Saturday he has "no doubt" in his batting line-up, and their spinners are the reason our 1st Test preview only leans to Pakistan narrowly.

Babar has done something clever this week. He has split his job in two. Selection belongs to the selectors. The future belongs to the next WTC cycle. That leaves him with exactly one thing he can be judged on: his own runs.

That is a brave place to stand when you have not made a Test hundred since 2022. It is also the only place a captain in his position can stand. He cannot pick the team. He cannot save this cycle. He can bat for a day.

If he does, this press conference will read like quiet defiance. If he doesn't, it will read like a man who had already worked out where the blame would go. Rawalpindi decides which.