Pakistan were ranked the No 1 Test team in the world a decade ago. What went wrong?

Something remarkable happened just after lunch on the fourth day of Pakistan’s Test with the West Indies in Port of Spain, Trinidad, this month.

First, Babar Azam, recently reappointed as captain, rocked on to his back foot and deposited the hosts’ Jomel Warrican over long on and into the stand at the Queen’s Park Oval for six. Then, from the left-arm spinner’s next delivery, Babar danced down the pitch and, in a more classical style, launched the ball high over long off to secure the tourists’ first Test victory away from home since July 2023.

The dominant eight-wicket win ended an eight-match losing streak in the format outside Pakistan and, given the paucity of success in recent times, a 1-1 draw in the Caribbean was to be savoured. It ensures Babar and his team carry a semblance of momentum with them to England, where they begin a three-match series on Wednesday at Headingley, Leeds, even with the captain ruled out of the first Test with a hand injury.

Pakistan, like many Test nations, have endured numerous lows. They did not play a home Test match in the 2010s until the last month of the decade, after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team in 2009 forced them to play mainly in the United Arab Emirates. But they had still never lost as many as eight away Tests on the bounce.

What underscores the unprecedented nature of this most recent regression is that, from February 2021 until October 2024, following their return to Pakistan, they failed to win a Test at home. And they had to roll out pitches primed for their spin attack to end that drought.

Babar, reappointed as captain last month having led the Test team from 2020-23, and head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed — who will be overseeing his third series in the role — travelled to England in hope rather than expectation. The conditions could help them, given the pitches will be worn out and tired after the heatwave that has gripped the United Kingdom, but few Pakistani supporters will believe their team can win.

They are ranked eighth in the nine-team ICC World Test Championship (WTC) standings, a spot below England, with two wins in six matches. They finished the last cycle at the bottom of the table and have not been genuine contenders for a berth in the final since the WTC began in 2019. It is all a far cry from a decade ago when, under the leadership of Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan won at the Oval to level their four-match series 2-2 in England and, a week later, summited the Test rankings.

Various reasons help explain their slump. “Not having a decentralised first-class cricket structure has finally caught up with the team, and it is the main reason for the decline in Pakistan’s performances,” Bazid Khan, a former Pakistan Test cricketer-turned-commentator, tells The Athletic. “The structure doesn’t allow the players to grow.”

Unlike in England, where counties enjoy administrative and financial independence, run their teams, and are responsible for the development of cricket in their jurisdictions, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) holds the reins of 16 regional cricket associations and runs the game across a country of 250 million people from its headquarters in Lahore.

The centralisation, however, has not translated into consistent policies or decision-making.

Men’s domestic cricket in Pakistan, aside from a brief spell from 2019 to 2023 while former Test captain Imran Khan was the country’s prime minister and instigated change, is divided between teams from regions and departments.

The departments consist of government organisations and private companies. Of late, there have been two separate first-class tournaments for regions and departments — the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy for regions, and the President’s Trophy for departments. To muddy the waters further, there have been instances when both regional and departmental teams have played against each other in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy.

The regions used to play T20 and 50-over cricket. But since the PCB abolished the Pakistan Cup one-day tournament in 2024, white-ball cricket for regions has been limited to a T20 competition — the National T20 Cup — while the departments field their teams only in the President’s Cup one-day tournament.

If that was not confusing enough, the calendar remains shrouded in uncertainty until only a few weeks before the first match of each campaign, when the PCB belatedly announces the fixtures. And there have been structural changes in each of the last four seasons. Competitions have been created and then shelved within a few years, constitutions adopted and then rewritten, and the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, the oldest domestic tournament in Pakistan, was trimmed from 18 teams to 10 for the 2025-26 edition. It is being played with 20 teams in the 2026- 27 season.

All of which has contributed to a sense of constant turmoil.

Then there are on-field issues.

A lack of facilities at first-class grounds and substandard pitches, which distort the equilibrium between bat and ball, often dominates discourse around domestic cricket. The scrutiny around locally manufactured balls compelled the PCB to introduce Kookaburra and Dukes balls, and they have flitted between those since 2019.

That was a move partly instigated to develop a new crop of fast bowlers, but a home series defeat to Bangladesh two years ago and the loss of the first Test to England in October 2024 prompted the PCB to switch to spin-friendly tracks.

Again, a lack of long-term strategy has cost them.

Pakistan, until recently, was synonymous with tearaway fast bowling as generations of quicks from the country terrorised batters around the world. Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar, one of the fastest bowlers ever to have played the game, not only sent chills down the spines of batters because of their pace, but their wizardry with the new and old ball alike left opponents mesmerised.

This crop of bowlers lacks their venom and hostility. According to CricViz, Pakistan pacers have bowled fewer than one per cent of balls above 140kmph (87mph) since March 2024, the least among all nine WTC teams.

Sides around the world spend significant amounts of time and money on their faster bowlers to maintain their ability to bowl at higher speeds, which is necessary to take 20 opposition wickets in a Test. But the lack of a proper contest between bat and ball in Pakistani domestic first-class cricket has starved locals of that preparation time and hampered the development of genuine pace.

It has had an impact on their batting, too.

The sturdiness that generational batters Hanif Mohammad, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq and, more recently, Mohammad Yousuf, Misbah and Younis Khan once brought to their batting line-up is now lacking. So fragile has their batting become that their average per batter of 25.60 in the current WTC cycle is only better than that of the bottom-ranked West Indies’ 23.88.

Collapses are now a regular feature of Pakistan’s batting, and their second-innings woes are especially striking.

When they bat in the third or fourth innings of a Test, the Pakistan batters average a meagre 18.65 (Sri Lanka, with 17.26, are the worst among the WTC teams). Their batting also struggles to go deep, underscored by the massive gulf in their averages before and after 50 overs of a Test first innings. They have the best average of 43.16 in the first 50 overs among all 12 Test nations since 2024, but it plummets to the third-worst of 25.37 from the 51st over onwards.

It is not as if Pakistan are thriving in the white-ball formats, either. They have failed to qualify for the semi-finals of the last four ICC tournaments – despite one of them, the 2025 Champions Trophy, being played at home.

Their last triumph in an ICC event was in 2017 when they beat India to win the Champions Trophy at the Oval and, while they won the 2009 T20 World Cup, their solitary 50-over World Cup success remains that inspired by Imran against England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground back in 1992.

Regardless, the lure of short-form cricket aggravates the Test situation.

The players are often criticised for preferring the glitz and glamour of franchise-based T10 and T20 tournaments around the world over the grind of first-class cricket. Centrally-contracted players have often been at odds with the PCB over the restrictions placed on their involvement in overseas franchise leagues. In 2019 it took an intervention by then PCB chief executive Wasim Khan to avert a player revolt over the cancellation of their No Objection Certificates (NOCs) to play in a T10 league in the United Arab Emirates.

To tackle the issue, the present administration introduced a format-based central contract structure this summer that removes the cap on the number of leagues in which shorter-format specialists can participate. Previously, the centrally contracted players were only allowed to play in two foreign leagues.

“There are a lot more opportunities for the players to make money and their name through white-ball T20 leagues, because of which there seems to be not much emphasis on red-ball now,” Bazid says. “Even if the players don’t play for Pakistan, there’s an opportunity to become a globetrotter by playing T20s all year round.”

Regular reshuffles at the helm have been destabilising. The turmoil after the removal of former prime minister Imran through a vote of no confidence in April 2022 reverberated through the corridors of power at the PCB.

The prime minister of Pakistan holds the office of the patron-in-chief of the cricket board and has a say in who becomes the PCB’s chairperson. While an election among the board of governors is held to elect a PCB chairperson, that practice is largely irrelevant, as the prime minister’s nominated member ends up winning unopposed.

There have been four different PCB chairpersons since 2022 and each has brought in a different vision and a new set of executives to run the board. Former Pakistan captain Ramiz Raja’s tenure lasted 14 months — less than half of the three-year term for which he had been elected — after he was removed by the new government that came into power after Imran was ousted.

Najam Sethi and Zaka Ashraf, two former PCB chairpersons, headed subsequent ad hoc management committees over the next year before the incumbent, Mohsin Naqvi, was elected to the position in February 2024. He is also a federal minister.

The chaos at the top has been reflected in regular changes to the national team’s captaincy, even if their most recent switch — Salman Agha will lead the team at Headingley in the absence of Babar, who should return for the second Test at Lord’s — was injury enforced. The team has had 10 head coaches since December 2022 and there have been myriad changes in the backroom staff and selection committee.

“Constant changes are never good and it is a problem as the clarity about the direction of the team and accountability becomes compromised,” Bazid says. “It leads to no sense of actual reporting and actual authority, and it lessens accountability. A new captain and management team have different ideas from their predecessors, and they are constantly taking the team in different directions.

“It builds insecurity. A player who has been doing well can be thrown out of the team because of the ideas that the latest management bring. Alternatively, players can coast through without performing as they are aware that a change is always just around the corner.”

The tinkering of backroom staff continues as Pakistan will have a new batting coach for the England Tests, with South African Michael Smith signing a two-year contract.

It has been three decades since Pakistan won a Test series in England, when Akram’s team beat Michael Atherton’s England at Lord’s and the Oval to win the three-Test series 2-0. But not many in the PCB expect the upcoming three Tests to replicate that success, or even that of the 1996 tour, despite the disorder which has engulfed their hosts since the winter’s Ashes series.

In a podcast broadcast before the two Tests in the Caribbean, Aaqib Javed, Pakistan’s director of high performance and one of the four selectors, admitted he would be content with a win in each of the series against the West Indies and England.

“This team has won four matches in the last three years and all those wins have been on the slow and turning tracks,” said Javed, who also filled in as an interim coach during the Champions Trophy 2025. “I would be happy if they win one Test each in the West Indies and England, as it will put them on a winning course away from home. You cannot jump directly from No 8 to No 1.”

Javed’s assessment prompted a furious reaction from fans. But it perfectly encapsulated where Pakistan’s cricket stands.

Click here to read article