Life Is a Rollercoaster. Babar Azam Has Spent 2026 Proving He Can Ride It.
From being dropped for net run rate to 588 PSL runs and a place in the final, Babar Azam's PSL 2026 season for Peshawar Zalmi is the best form of his life in the format. Here is what changed, how he changed it, and what it means for what comes next.
Two months ago, Pakistan dropped Babar Azam from their final T20 World Cup group game to chase net run rate. The move worked, technically. Pakistan did not make the semi-finals anyway. Babar watched from the dugout as his country crashed out, one more humiliation in a stretch of twelve months that had already produced several.
He is now 588 runs into the PSL 2026 season, the joint-highest tally anyone has ever scored in a single PSL edition. He scored his fastest-ever PSL century in the Qualifier against Quetta Gladiators. Peshawar Zalmi are in the final, first team through, having lost only one of their eleven games. And Babar, for the first time in a long time, looks like a man who is enjoying himself.
This is the rollercoaster he mentioned. This is the part where it goes back up.
Where He Was Twelve Months Ago
The numbers from PSL 2025 were not the kind Babar is used to seeing next to his name. 288 runs for the season. His lowest return since the inaugural 2016 edition. Peshawar Zalmi did not make the playoffs for the first time in the franchise's history. Shoaib Akhtar said Babar had “no intention to improve.” Pakistan's batting coach Hanif Malik would later tell Crickxo that the criticism “has had an impact on him.” Even the big toe on his left foot was briefly a topic of national debate as pundits searched for technical explanations for a slump that defied easy analysis.
By the time the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka came around, Babar was averaging 91 runs from six innings at a strike rate of 112. Michael Vaughan, watching from the outside, was blunt: Pakistan could not drop him because of institutional politics, not because he was earning his place. Being undropable for the wrong reasons is a specific kind of misery.
He dropped himself, in a way. Or was dropped. Either way, he sat out while Pakistan lost.
What Changed in PSL 2026
The easiest explanation is that Babar went back to what worked: opening the batting. At number four for Pakistan's T20 side, operating as an insurance policy for when the top order failed, he had lost the freedom that made him dangerous. At the top of the order for Zalmi, facing the first ball, setting the pace himself, the old instincts came back.
There is also a technical change that goes beyond the psychological reset. Against spin, Babar has historically committed hard to the front foot, looking to get to the pitch of the ball. This season, he has been meeting the ball later, playing off the back foot, using the slog sweep in a way he has never consistently deployed before. He attempted it seven times against the spin-friendly lengths in PSL 2026. He found the boundary with five of them. In the previous three seasons combined, he had tried it six times in similar situations.
Against Quetta's Abrar Ahmed in the Qualifier, he launched him twice over midwicket in a single over. Against Usman Tariq, he rocked back, waited through the pause in delivery, and timed his swing down the ground. One dot ball in 52 deliveries. For a batter who was being criticised for dot-ball accumulation twelve months ago, that is a statement.
The Kusal Mendis Factor
Babar did not do this alone. Kusal Mendis, the Sri Lankan opener, arrived at Peshawar Zalmi this season and produced the best PSL campaign of any overseas player in recent memory. He leads the tournament's run scoring charts. Together, Babar and Mendis have put on 557 runs across six innings, three of them century stands. Their 191-run partnership against Karachi Kings set a new PSL record for any wicket.
Mendis hits. Babar accumulates and then accelerates. In the Qualifier, Mendis scored 62 per cent of their 135-run stand before getting out. The moment he went, Babar scored his next 37 runs from twelve balls. The gear shift was immediate and decisive. This is not an accident. This is a batter who knows exactly what he is doing and why.
What Babar Said About It
He has been measured when asked to reflect on the past year. “There comes a time in life when you feel what you are doing is right but that is not the case and you need to accept that. You have to go back to the things that worked for you before and having discussions help you gain clarity.”
That is not a dramatic statement. It does not throw anyone under the bus. It is the language of a player who has spent time looking honestly at what went wrong rather than blaming circumstances. His own read: he got rigid, he stopped listening, and then he accepted that he had to change. The results are on the scoreboard.
Misbah-ul-Haq, watching this season, put it more directly. “Hats off to him that he came with the right frame of mind and took the challenge that he has to prove himself and perform. What he has done is something special.”
The Final and What Comes After
Sunday night in Lahore, Zalmi face Hyderabad Kingsmen. Babar faces Hunain Shah, fresh off defending six in the last over to beat Islamabad United two nights ago. Two of the PSL's most compelling individual stories on the same ground in the same game. Cricket does occasionally arrange itself in satisfying ways.
The harder question for Babar comes after the final. PSL 2026 has been the stage for his rehabilitation, and the numbers are as good as any he has produced. Converting that into sustained international form, against the world's best attacks in conditions that do not always spin and on pitches that do not always suit patient timing, is a separate challenge. At 31, he is not running out of time. But he is no longer buying it on credit either.
Pakistan will be watching Sunday's final through two lenses at once: hoping Zalmi win, and hoping what they see from Babar is portable.
Is PSL 2026 the definitive Babar Azam comeback, or does he still have something to prove at the international level?
