The recent disappointments of the white-ball side has created a sense of disillusionment the Test team isn’t immune from either. It can be tempting to conclude, upon first glance after entering the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, that Bangladesh’s tour of Pakistan has not captured the public imagination.

Evidence to that effect is visible throughout the area, and extraneous factors don’t exactly help. This is the earliest start to a Pakistan home summer in history, August being among the least hospitable months to play cricket in any of Pakistan’s major centres owing to the oppressive humidity. The journey to the stadium on Thursday was an adventure in its own right, with the main access routes closed off by giant shipping containers to subdue political protests planned throughout the city. When a media colleague was asked if official attendance figures would be released for the day, “count them” was the wry riposte from another.

None of this is new, though. Pakistan has always had hot summers, and yet attendances at the Asia Cup in similar weather last year were sizeable. The challenges of getting to stadia hasn’t prevented fans from filling seats if they really want to get to games, as many PSL games will verify. Even if you argue that Bangladesh’s lack of Test star power is unconducive to crowd pulling, recall that Rawalpindi recorded a full house on day five of a Test against Sri Lanka in 2019 after three near-washout days had guaranteed a drab draw.

However, as Saud Shakeel and Mohammad Rizwan walked on for the second day of a finely poised Test match, hardly anyone was about to watch them put on a masterclass in drawing Bangladesh’s sting out. Shakeel has been gently coaxed by Pakistan’s backroom staff into more aggressive shot-making of late, but with the visitors just two wickets away from bringing Shaheen Shah Afridi out to the middle, he understood the value of falling back on the solid conservatism that brought him initial success with Pakistan. He struck five boundaries from 88 deliveries on the first day; it would be another 42 overs before his first on the second.

But what Rizwan was up to from the other end was eminently watchable. In that fidgety, punchy mood that is equal parts delightful and infuriating depending on where your allegiances lie, he kept the runs whizzing along, forcing Bangladesh to spread out their field while giving his partner the space to play at his own tempo. He went reaching for the fuller deliveries finding gaps through the offside early on, and pulled effectively off the ribs when the line allowed him. When Nahid Rana, perhaps the fastest bowler Bangladesh have ever produced, decided to use the surface to target the diminutive Rizwan, he bent his knees, moved his head out of the way and helped him over third man for consecutive boundaries, demonstrating an elasticity that might not have been out of place in Paris a fortnight earlier.

It wasn't long before the pair had toppled the game off the tightrope it balanced on overnight, though the only ones around to watch were a smattering of spectators that gathered on the eastern terraces as the sun gave way to shade at a ground renowned in Pakistan for guaranteeing full houses for all international cricket. It is in part Rawalpindi’s historical crowds that have inspired the idea of taking Test cricket to smaller centres around the country, with broadcasters and wider stakeholders aware of the atmosphere packed crowds in cozy venues can generate.

Little of this is the fault of a Pakistan Test side that attempted a hard relaunch towards the end of last year. Shan Masood’s side may have been whitewashed in Australia like every iteration of Pakistan has since 1999, but they attempted to play a brand of cricket that saw them take the lead in one Test and come intriguingly close to winning another. Indeed, Pakistan’s new Test head coach Jason Gillespie told ESPNcricinfo several Australian players had praised Pakistan’s approach to that series, admitting they were unlucky not to win a Test. While the opposition’s quality plays its part – and England in October is almost assured of larger, more boisterous crowds – it is hard to imagine spectator interest being quite this low if this series was played immediately off the back of that one.

But much like an upsetting meal can put you off food for a while – no matter the quality – the white-ball cricket Pakistan served up in the intervening months has left a bitter taste in spectators mouths. The farcical manner in which Pakistan’s change of captaincy was handled, the resentful power struggle in the camp, and the disastrous T20 World Cup it all culminated in has created a sense of disillusionment the Test team isn’t immune from, either. There is a trust deficit Pakistan have to bridge, and with Hownine Tests scheduled in the next six months, it is this red-ball team that responsibility will fall upon.

Rizwan’s supporters and detractors alike acknowledge him as a legendary reader of public sentiment. Both him and Shakeel will have been aware that while praise for what they achieved today may be muted, any criticism had the early stages of this day gone differently would have been intense. The early stages of a rebuild can often put teams in no-win situations, but on the day, Rizwan and Shakeel ensured Pakistan did not lose. And though Pakistan supporters’ anger and passion is caricatured to the point of parody, they are also among the most forgiving. It won’t take too many more days like these to have Rawalpindi rocking again.

This is a big season of cricket for Pakistan, an unprecedented season in some ways. They play nine Tests, the most in a season since 1998-99. They host three bilateral Test series in a season, which they haven’t done before. They host an ICC event for the first time since 1996. Their two main grounds are undergoing the biggest upgrades since practically forever. And the PSL becomes the first league to go head-to-head against the IPL next year. It all feels a little bit seismic.

It Is also a big season for Babar Azam, their premier batter and, until recently, the biggest star in the Pakistan game and unquestioned leader of all three national men’s sides. But in the last year some of that authority has gone. He’s no longer the all-format captain. He remains their T20 captain, though even that isn’t guaranteed.

He doesn't quite command the team as he once did, and in Shaheen Afridi, for one, different centres of power are emergent. Once, Babar presided over a happy and united dressing room; the one he is merely a member of now isn’t quite as shiny, happy or smiley as the social media posts want you to believe.

Above all, though, and far more a matter for concern, is that some of the lustre has slipped from his batting, whence his authority primarily flowed from. In T20s, the debate around his batting is an old and tiresome one. ODIs don’t matter, until they do. It is, instead, in Tests where a sharp dip in productivity has really hit home. It has also passed, by and large, unnoted.

Long-form batting needs regular release. It works to a constant rhythm. Pakistan’s recent Test schedule has been so arrhythmic (and after the Tests against West Indies in January 2025, they don’t play another for ten months), it isn’t easy, even for someone of Babar’s gifts, to dance to this irregular beat. And schedules as they are mean he hardly gets to play any domestic first-class cricket in the interim: his last such game was the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy final in December 2019.

The off-field dysfunctions of his employers can’t have been helpful, the churn of board and coaching regimes. He is not an especially articulate or expressive personality publicly, and he hasn’t spoken about being removed from the captaincy after the 2023 World Cup. In any case, the PCB will hardly allow for such a public venting, not least because of their own role in building him up to that stature in the preceding years.

But who knows how much being dumped so suddenly as captain – that too by one of the all-time clown PCB administrations under Zaka Ashraf – jolted him? We’re talking here of an almost unparalleled tenure by Pakistan standards: in the modern age (excluding Abdul Kardar), only Misbah-ul-Haq has been captain longer without (anything but temporary) interruption, and that too wasn’t across all formats like Babar. He’d seen off multiple board chairmen, lived through various coaches, through losses and wins alike, across four unchallenged years. Who knows how much that removal shook his core equanimity, or the equilibrium that had once developed in the dressing room under him? He’s never struck one as a proactive or imaginative captain but equally he – or his batting - rarely seemed burdened by it.

He now has nine Tests ahead of him, a rare uninterrupted sequence of long-form cricket, and the comfort of home surfaces in seven of them. No captaincy as distraction (though neither, perhaps, as motivation); challenges against left-arm spin to overcome, quality pace to repel; a return to South Africa, where he first served notice of his Test quality; a high-profile series against England. All in all, it is the perfect platform on which to refresh, to reset. Nine Tests to distance himself from the doom and gloom and stagnancy of the last 18 months or so, and to move closer to where he really should be.

About the writer
Shahzeb Ali Rizvi is a sports aficionado with a keen eye for the intricacies of cricket and football. He can be reached at [email protected]