What Babar Azam's slow thirties reveal about his missing ODI hundreds

The view doing the rounds is that Babar Azam has fallen away badly, with a single international century in three years held up as the proof. In ODIs the drought is real. He has 20 hundreds in 142 career innings, and only one of them, an unbeaten 102 against Sri Lanka last November, has come in the last two years.

The runs, though, have not dried up. He averages 39.04 in men's ODIs over the last two years, against 32.99 for top-seven batters in the same period. That is well short of his career average of 53.21, yet it still means he scores more runs per dismissal than most of the top-order batters around him.

Where have Babar Azam's hundreds gone?

What has gone is his tempo. His strike rate over the last two years is 74.7, against 85.1 for top-seven batters, which means he now scores more slowly than the average top-order player. His recent innings follow that pattern, with 40 from 84 balls against Australia and 34 from 52 against England.

So the useful scores keep coming while the big ones have thinned out: six fifties and one hundred in 28 innings. A batter scoring below the top-order rate needs more of the 50 overs to reach three figures, which leaves him less room to get there before the innings runs out or the risk of a dismissal catches up with him.

How good is Babar Azam in ODIs now?

Our ratings put him 40th of 118 ODI batters across every side, worth 2.7 runs a match more than an average player. That is a sound international batter, and a measure of how far he has slipped from the standard he once set, when an average above 50 made him one of the most reliable run-makers in the format.

Is the century count fair to Babar Azam?

The count is accurate, and it does point to a real decline, but on its own it makes him look worse than he is. Babar still averages comfortably above the top-order norm; the part of his game that has fallen below that norm is his scoring rate.

That is where the fix lies. Starting with Sri Lanka at Gaddafi Stadium, Babar needs to lift his tempo once he is set and score at the pace of the top-order batters around him. The average says the runs are still in him, and the strike rate will decide whether the hundreds return.