What 15 defeats in 20 Tests hide about Pakistan

Bangladesh had never beaten Pakistan in a Test until August 2024. They have won all four meetings since, two in Rawalpindi that summer and two more in Mirpur and Sylhet this May. Those four defeats sit inside a run of 15 in Pakistan’s last 20 Tests.

The shambles everyone saw

Salman Agha captained at Headingley while Babar Azam was injured, and made 21 and 4 in an innings defeat. He was left out at Lord’s and released before Edgbaston. Ali Usman took five for 95 in England’s innings at Headingley and was sent home too. Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke came across from the white-ball side to replace Sarfaraz Ahmed and Umar Gul for the last Test, and Misbah-ul-Haq and Asad Shafiq resigned as selectors.

“Trust Pakistan cricket to do the unbelievable,” Harsha Bhogle wrote on 31 August, in a post seen more than a million times. Kevin Pietersen asked the same day: “It can’t be real?! Surely?!” Darren Gough, on Stick to Cricket this month, put it more bluntly: “How can they be so bad?”

Pakistan went to Edgbaston with three debutants, Razaullah, Mohammad Imran and Ghazi Ghori, and lost by eight wickets.

A mid-table side losing like a bottom one

Since June 2025 Pakistan have won two Tests and lost seven, and none of the nine was drawn. Only West Indies, Zimbabwe and Ireland have won a smaller share of their decided Tests over that time.

Our ratings see a better side than that. Built from the players in the XIs Pakistan have actually picked, they put Pakistan sixth of the 11 Test nations, ahead of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Indies. Pakistan were sixth when this run began in June 2025, and they have been fifth, sixth or seventh at every point since 2018.

The defeats that jar are against the sides below them. Pakistan lost both Tests in Bangladesh and split the two in Trinidad, one win in four against sides our ratings place beneath them.

The batting has gone

Pakistan’s top seven have averaged 28.9 in those nine Tests. Their opponents’ top seven averaged 33.5 in the same matches.

Most of that fall belongs to three batters who used to carry the side. Saud Shakeel averaged 50.2 in Tests from January 2020 to May 2025, and he has averaged 24.9 since. Imam-ul-Haq has gone from 47.1 to 24.8, and Mohammad Rizwan from 41.2 to 27.3.

Babar Azam has held up. He has averaged 44.7 since June 2025, a shade above the 42.8 he managed before it, and at 18th in our Test batting rankings he is Pakistan’s highest-rated batter. Shan Masood’s average has risen from 30.7 to 34.1, and the pair made 95 and 76 in the second innings at Edgbaston.

Our rating of Pakistan’s batting shows how far the rest has slipped. It peaked in January 2023 and has fallen by more than half since.

An attack that leans on one man

The bowling has been closer to the mark, mostly thanks to Mohammad Abbas. He has taken 31 wickets at 21.1 since June 2025 and is fifth in our Test bowling rankings. At Lord’s he took nine for 130 in a 194-run defeat.

As a group, Pakistan’s seamers have averaged 30.0 in these nine Tests, against 24.3 for their opponents’ seamers in the same matches. They have needed 49 balls for each wicket, where the other side’s seamers needed 40. Shaheen Shah Afridi took 91 wickets at 27.3 between January 2020 and May 2025. Since June 2025 he has 10 at 31.0 in three Tests, and he has not played one since Mirpur in May.

Away from home the gap shows most. Pakistan have won one of their last 11 Tests outside Pakistan, in Trinidad in August.

Cause or symptom?

“There is a difference between being bad at cricket and being chaotic about being bad at cricket,” Sarah Waris wrote in Wisden after the Lord’s defeat.

The selection churn looks like the obvious culprit. Pakistan have used 25 players in nine Tests since June 2025 and made 3.1 changes to their XI a Test, up from 2.3 between 2021 and May 2025. Yet South Africa, with 3.5 changes a Test, and New Zealand, with 3.4, have chopped and changed more, and between them they have won 13 of their 15 decided Tests.

What has beaten Pakistan is batting and seam bowling well below the opposition’s in the same matches. The sackings followed those defeats, so for most of this run the chaos has been a symptom.

At Edgbaston it started to become a cause. By our ratings, the XI Pakistan fielded there was about 45 runs a match weaker than the one they picked at Lord’s.

The verdict

On results, Pakistan are one of the four worst Test sides in the world. On paper, they are the sixth best. The gap between the two is three batters far below their old standards and a seam attack that relies on Abbas.

That makes this a side that should beat Bangladesh and West Indies more often than it has. Whether it does depends on Shakeel, Imam and Rizwan finding their old form, and two of the three were among the seven sent home before Edgbaston.