Babar is here to stay but his defenders need to realize that Babar needs to improve his SR to be a valuable member of the squad. His type of batting is ok when setting or chasing a target of 120-140, anything higher and he will be counterproductive for the team's cause
I don't think Babar has any detractors. one cannot argue with his numbers, they are outstanding. But at the same time I don't believe (a) he has all the shots in the books - PP's all time favorite kiss of death and (b) I don't see a lot of effort at improving areas of his game. He has time on his side to get better, but doesn't mean we are duty bound to wait and duly praise every inning till such time.
He has an issue with how he finishes his innings with respect to what it means for the team's cause (I would t call it selfish yet) just like Haris Sohail did in his short career. No doubt he can fix it.
You also have to realize Pakistan mostly plays T20I on pitches where par score is 140/150, where as tournaments are played on pitches where par score id 170/180, its bad strategy and planning on our part. We want to win these bi-literal series via spinners, that does not help in tournaments. Our batters as well as spinners are under prepare for those tournaments...This is something management has not fixed in last 10 years, players cannot be blamed for that entirely...
If Babar players on good pitches his strike rate would go up (130 range from 115) and his pull and cut will improve, which will benefit him and prepare team better for tournaments... My view is in LOIs only thing that matter is winning the tournaments, these bi-literal series are meaningless, if we are not marching towards that goal, clearly in entire Misbah's era we never developed team or conditions to look at bigger picture.
Finishing and strike rotation is an area he has to work on, but again not playing on typical T20 surfaces does not help, on two pace wicket or gripping wicket it will be hard to time and play shots...Once we address that, I think his development will accelerate and frankly so are some of the others...
If we don't we will be like this, even if we put Kohli in there, after two years he will loose some of his game...If you really see development of Kohli, that got accelerated when he was playing a lot on flat tracks and small grounds in last 4/5 years. Look at score card of every bi-lateral series in India, 350 is par score, where as in UAE 270...Interestingly we knew in 2015 WC, India would not be able to chase 320+ against Strac and Johnson pace in their backyard, regardless of how good they are at home, which is separate discussion...But the point is we need to be bold and prepare high scoring grounds for bi-literal series so that we can get real match practice not just a checkmark that we won the series...Our team don't get the taste of real LOI cricket till we enter the tournament, which is too late.
