Babar's golden years were from 2016-2021 and in these golden years he was nothing more then an accumulative wall.
Similar to Misbah(albeit he's a better batsmen then Misbah), all his innings have been accumulative excluding Minnow or c string bashing. Their isn't one tournament where he's actually bullied and butchered teams and made a solid name for himself.
Every single one of his innings against top sides involves playing like Misbah which is basically making 50 of 75 at best or getting out for a low score. His fans use the pitch pitch nonsense as a pure excuse to justify it. And No Labu's innings in the final was not good in the same way KL Rahul innings wasn't good. Travis carried and took the side home. Labu just deserves credit for hanging in their, you're making it seem as if labu was the one who took the side home.
No quality, orthodox batsman peaks between 22-27 and then declines. It doesn’t happen.
Batsmen in their late 20s and early 30s often go through slumps and fans can get impatient and short-sighted and start believing that it is terminal decline.
Babar is not the first or the last batsman to go through this and induce similar fan reactions. A lot of people thought Kohli was done by 2020-2021, Root was done by 2019-2020, Tendulkar was done by 2005-2007, and of course there are several other examples.
Before someone gets triggered at Babar being juxtaposed with Kohli, Root and Tendulkar etc., that is not the point - the point is that Babar is a very good batsman with an orthodox way of batting & such batsmen don’t decline in their late 20s and early 30s.
Babar over the last 18 months or so has been below his best form but almost every significant batsman, perhaps barring Don Bradman, has gone through such a period in his career and they have come out of it.
There is no need to be dramatic about Babar. He is under the scanner because of captaincy as well, but whether he stays as captain or resigns/gets sacked, he will score lots of runs in the coming years as he enters his natural peak.
As far as Labuschagne is concerned, the value of his knock was nothing like Rahul’s who had no value.
Just because both were half-centuries at low SRs it doesn’t mean that they were similar because how good or bad your innings is has nothing to do with your SR in isolation but everything do with your innings within the context of the game.
A high SR innings isn’t always good and a low SR innings isn’t always bad.
Batting is all about partnerships. No one takes anyone home on his own. It is all about two batsmen playing their roles. Even a Glen Maxwell needed a Pat Cummins vs Afghanistan.
If hanging in was that easy, Warner, Marsh and Smith would have hung on but they couldn’t.
Without Labuachagne shutting up shop on India, it would have been extremely difficult for Head to get Australia over the line.
Similarly, without Head taking on the bowlers, it would have been extremely difficult for Labuschagne to exert pressure on India.
Australia won because both Head and Labuschagne played their roles to perfection.
