Breaking point: Babar faces his reckoning

If there ever was an opportunity for Babar Azam to prove his mettle in all three formats, it is this Domain Test series against Australia.

Babar is the most famous of the current crop of Pakistan cricketers but hasn't been talked about in the same breath as the four great batsmen of this generation – Steve Smith, Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson and Joe Root.

The 25-year-old wasted no time in stamping his authority on limited-overs cricket, but his record in the longest version of the game leaves him lagging behind discussions about modern-day greats.

He averages above 50 in T20 and One-Day Internationals, but in Tests it is only 35.28. At this year's World Cup he scored 474 runs at 67.71, including high-quality match-winning innings against New Zealand, South Africa and England.

Considering how tough Australia is for touring Pakistani teams, and the importance placed on runs scored in this country, Babar will have no better opportunity to prove his worth in Test cricket.

He has just one century in 21 Tests, scored against New Zealand in Abu Dhabi last year in the 32nd innings of his career. No frontline Pakistan batsman ever took that many innings to score a century in Tests.

Babar had been getting starts but not converting those into hundreds remains a concern for him.

There was even a phase in his career when he scored five ducks in 12 innings in 2017 but Pakistan persisted with him. The amount of talent, surely it would only be a matter of time before he found his feet at Test level.

The signs this could be a breakout series are there. Since 2018, Babar has scored 760 runs at 50.66. He scored 99 against Australia and 127 against the Kiwis in Tests in Arabia last season.

However, it was his battle against Dale Steyn in the following series in South Africa that has been the highest point of his career.

In that series, Babar scored 92 runs off 79 balls with the help of 21 boundaries against one of the best fast bowlers the game has seen.

Pakistan haven't played a Test since then but Babar's 157 against Australia A and 63 against a Cricket Australia XI in the tour matches in Perth show that similar performances could be coming in the Test series.

"The pitch on which we played a three-day match was quite difficult and the bowling was really good too. Australia A were playing with four of their best bowlers. Babar in that innings paid respect to the good balls and looked for shots on the bad balls. It was a very mature innings," Pakistan coach and former captain Misbah-ul-Haq noted.

"It wasn't just aggression, aggression, aggression. He batted with a very balanced approach.

"The way he batted in the two tour matches and before that in the T20s and even in the nets, we can see a lot of confidence in his batting.

"He played a long innings and I think he is ready to play such innings at Test levels too."

Pakistan boast senior batsmen Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq but their hopes are pinned on Babar, their highest-ranked batsman in all three formats. Where Babar's performance goes, it seems as though the team's fortunes are sure to follow.

"He is very important for us. The best thing about him right now is his confidence," says Misbah.

"The last series Pakistan played was in South Africa and the conditions there were really tough but he played some good attacking cricket there.

"He seems a changed batsman after that tour. He understands the conditions really well and I think the conditions here will be better for batting than what they were in South Africa."

Babar was thrown into Test cricket as a No.3 batsman and, perhaps predictably, struggled.

He's not alone in that regard. All the modern-day greats of Smith, Kohli, Williamson and Root, they all started their careers lower down the order and after proving their worth were moved up.

Image Id: 9625464C125341F9B999F16A57EFCA83 Image Caption: Babar found his early days in Test cricket tough // Getty

Even Australian Test legend Ricky Ponting was forced to earn his stripes batting in the lower end of the middle order before being elevated to No.3, and was vocal about Australia following a similar path this season.

But Babar batted at four on his Test debut against West Indies in 2016 and then in the following eight Tests (in three away tours to New Zealand, Australia and West Indies) he was used at No.3, a position at which he averages only 25.92 in 15 innings.

It's a favourite pastime to compare Babar with Kohli. The Pakistani has a lot of distance to cover between himself and the India captain, but there is something he can learn from Kohli's career.

In 2014, Kohli had a paltry series in England scoring only 134 runs at 13.40 and came to Australia with lot of questions to answer. There were doubts if Kohli could transform his ODI performances into Test match cricket.

He expelled those doubts with twin centuries in the first Test in Adelaide and finished the series with four centuries. India didn't win a match on that tour, during which he assumed the national captaincy, but it defined Kohli the cricketer he is today.

Performances in Australia are remembered for a long time. Kohli's India returned to Australia last summer, and secured their first-ever series win on these shores and are now the dominant force in Test cricket.

Babar couldn't do much on his previous tour, falling four times out of six to Australian seamer Josh Hazlewood, who then rated Azhar Ali as a more difficult batsman to bowl to.

But now Babar has a new opportunity, a chance to score runs in Australia against their fearsome pace attack and on these fast, bouncy surfaces so foreign to Pakistani batsmen, and prove the world he belongs to the upper echelon of Test match cricketers.

Domain Test Series v Pakistan

Australia squad: Tim Paine (c), Cameron Bancroft, Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Matthew Wade, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Azhar Ali (c), Abid Ali, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Haris Sohail, Imam-ul-Haq, Imran Khan Snr, Iftikhar Ahmed, Kashif Bhatti, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Musa Khan, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shan Masood, Yasir Shah.

Warm-up match: Australia A v Pakistan, match drawn

Warm-up match: v Cricket Australia XI, November 15-16, WACA Ground

First Test: November 21-25, Gabba (Seven, Fox & Kayo)

Second Test: November 29 – December 3, Adelaide (d/n) (Seven, Fox & Kayo)