An Oddsworth Opinion
Babar Azam's three-hundred streaks hide a two-year drought
Babar Azam has twice scored hundreds in three consecutive ODI innings, something no other batter in the format's history has managed. It describes a player Pakistan have not seen for a while. In men's ODIs over the last two years he has made one hundred in 26 innings, from a man with 20 hundreds in 134 innings across his career.
His last two years in ODIs
The drought shows up in his tempo. His average over those two years is 39, comfortably above the 33 that top-seven batters manage in men's ODIs, so he is still hard to get out. But he has scored at a strike rate of 75 against the top-seven norm of 85, which means a Babar fifty now costs Pakistan overs the rest of the order has to buy back.
The one hundred he did make, 102 not out from 119 balls against Sri Lanka last November, came at close to the top-seven tempo and carried Pakistan to a win by eight wickets. The slower innings are the ones that cost them: 29 from 51 balls against Sri Lanka in the game before that hundred, then 69 from 94 in the first match against Australia in May and 40 from 84 in the third, a game Pakistan won by four wickets. Those are the long stays that eat overs without turning into big scores.
Career average 53.6Not out
Where our ratings put him
Our ratings have him 32nd of 87 men's ODI batters, worth about two runs a match more than an average player. Most sides would take that from their number three, but for a batter whose whole method rests on turning long stays into match-winning scores it is a measure of how far two slow years have dragged him. In a side that has won by six runs and lost by eleven in its last ten ODIs, the overs he gives away are hard to get back.
Do the streaks still describe him?
They describe the batter he was. Three hundreds in a row is a feat of frequency before anything else, belonging to a batter who reaches three figures so regularly that a run of them becomes a matter of time, and for most of his career Babar was that batter. The one of the last two years passes a hundred so rarely that a streak cannot even begin. The next series will settle whether the hundreds come back often enough for a third run, because the Babar of the last two years would not have put either of the first two together.