LAHORE: Three losses in a row to Bangladesh. A captain running out of lives. A batting order that collapses on cue. And now, the most complicated selection decision in years walks back into the dressing room on a rehabilitated knee.

Pakistan do not arrive in Sylhet for the second Test so much as they wash up there — carried by the wreckage of yet another second-innings capitulation, their confidence eroded, their selection picture murkier than it has been in years, and their opponents more certain of victory than any Bangladesh side has ever had the right to feel against them.

This is no longer about one bad series or one bad match. This is a pattern so entrenched it has become identity.

The venue does not care about reputations

Sylhet has never been a ground where the powerful simply turn up and win.

In five Tests at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium, Bangladesh have won just twice — against Zimbabwe in 2005 and 2018, and against a Sri Lanka side in 2023 that arrived with far more credibility than Pakistan carries today. The ground has a habit of humbling the expected victor, of rewarding the side that knows its conditions and punishing the one that doesn’t.

Pakistan do not know these conditions. Bangladesh know them intimately — and the numbers make that intimacy look almost unfair.

Taijul Islam has taken 31 wickets in five Tests here. Mehidy Hasan Miraz has 22. Nahid Rana, in only his third Test at this venue, already has 11. With the bat, Mominul Haque has scored 374 runs at Sylhet, Shanto 371, and Mahmudul Hasan Joy 324.

Five of these six cricketers were central to the 104-run victory in Mirpur. On a ground where they have collectively thrived, the prospect of containing them is daunting. The prospect of doing so with a Pakistan side that has just been bowled out for 163 in a must-survive situation borders on the delusional.

Bangladesh will start this Test as favourites. Not slight favourites. Clear favourites.

The collapse that will not go away

Before Pakistan can even begin to discuss Sylhet, they must first confront what happened in Mirpur — and what happened in Mirpur was not a surprise. That is precisely the problem.

From 119 for three to 163 all out. Chasing 268. Needing only to bat out two sessions to save the match. They could not do it.

The scorecard reads like a photostat of every recent Pakistan second innings under pressure. When Bangladesh toured Rawalpindi in August 2024, Pakistan collapsed from 66 for two to 146 all out in the first Test, and from 62 for three to 172 all out in the second. Against the West Indies in Multan in January 2025, they were dismissed for 133 to lose by 120 runs. Against South Africa, they slipped from 60 for three to 138 all out. Each time, the same story: a position of relative safety, a trigger wicket, and then the unravelling.

This is not a technical problem that can be fixed by one net session or one team meeting. It is a psychological condition — a collective fragility under pressure that has been left unaddressed across multiple coaches, multiple selection panels, and multiple series.

Sarfaraz Ahmed, in only his first series as head coach, inherits a wound that has been festering for the better part of two years. Nothing in Mirpur suggested he has yet found the medicine, let alone administered it.

The hat-trick of Test victories Bangladesh have now accumulated against Pakistan is not a footnote. It is a statement about the relative trajectory of two sides — one ascending, one unable to arrest its slide.

The Babar paradox

And into this environment walks Babar Azam.

His return from the knee injury that kept him out of Mirpur is the most significant and most complicated development ahead of the Sylhet Test — not because his quality is in question, but because his presence raises questions that Pakistan’s management would rather not answer publicly.

Babar is, unambiguously, one of the finest batters of his generation. At his best, he is the kind of player who does not merely score runs but imposes himself on a match — who makes opposition captains reconsider plans and recalibrate fields. Pakistan need that version of Babar Azam desperately.

But here is the editorial truth that the numbers demand: in 30 Test innings, Babar has not scored a century. Four half-centuries since his 161 against New Zealand in Karachi in December 2022 — a gap of over two years and counting. This is not a minor drought for a batter of his profile. This is the central anxiety of Pakistan’s Test batting, the unspoken tension in every team meeting and selection discussion.

The question is no longer whether Babar will come good. It is what happens to Pakistan if, in a series they cannot afford to lose further, he does not.

Bangladesh’s attack offers a specific examination. Nahid Rana’s steep bounce and raw pace will test Babar’s judgment outside off stump. Mehidy’s offspin into the rough will probe the footwork that has, on occasions, looked less assured than it once did. Taijul’s left-arm spin from around the wicket will demand decisions.

These are not generic threats — they are precisely the kind of multi-dimensional pressure that has exposed Pakistan’s middle order throughout this series.

If Babar walks in and absorbs it, he could be transformative. If the same trigger patterns that have haunted him in recent Test cricket reassert themselves in Sylhet, the fallout will be significant.

What is certain is this: Pakistan cannot build a plan around hoping Babar finds form. They need a structure that functions if he does, and survives if he doesn’t.

The selection minefield

Babar’s return is, in theory, straightforward. In practice, it is anything but — because it requires someone to be dropped from a team that, on paper, has very few obvious candidates for omission.

Shan Masood is the name most frequently whispered in cricketing circles, and it is not difficult to understand why. Scores of nine and two in Mirpur, eleven defeats in fifteen Tests as captain — the statistics are damning. But dropping your captain mid-series, particularly when no vice-captain has been named, is not a selection decision. It is an act of institutional chaos. Who leads the side in Sylhet? Who captains the West Indies tour?

The PCB has created an administrative vacuum by failing to name a deputy, and that vacuum now constrains the very selection flexibility the management needs. Shan’s position is untenable on numbers alone — but the system that should allow for his removal has not been built.

Saud Shakeel is the most defensible omission based on current form. His 2025 Test record reads 269 runs across five matches, and scores of zero and 15 in Mirpur offered nothing to suggest he has found answers to the challenges that have troubled him. But removing Shakeel triggers a structural problem: Babar cannot comfortably slot into the top four without a wholesale reorganisation of the batting order — the last thing a psychologically fragile lineup needs on the eve of a must-win Test.

Abdullah Fazal has been mentioned as the man to vacate number three for Babar. The logic exists on paper — Fazal was selected as Babar’s replacement and has now served that purpose. But dropping a debutant who scored 60 and 66 with composure and class in his first Test would be an act of such spectacular mismanagement that it would undermine Pakistan’s credibility as a development environment for young talent for years. If Pakistan are willing to discard a player the moment the man he replaced recovers from injury, they should not be surprised when the next generation of talent looks elsewhere.

The cleanest answer — and it is not a perfect answer, because there are none — is Imam-ul-Haq. With Imam out, Shan Masood returns to his natural role as opener, a position from which he has scored 1,576 of his 2,561 Test runs. Babar slots in at number four, behind the debutants who have earned their places, ahead of the established middle order. It preserves continuity, restores logic to the batting order, and gives Pakistan the best available combination of experience and emerging talent.

Whether Sarfaraz Ahmed and his management team arrive at this conclusion — or whether emotion, loyalty and institutional inertia produce a different outcome — will tell us a great deal about whether this coaching regime is capable of making hard, clear-eyed decisions under pressure.

The bowling question nobody is asking loudly enough

The focus on batting has somewhat obscured a bowling conversation that deserves equal attention.

Mohammad Abbas was Pakistan’s best cricketer in Mirpur, full stop. His five-wicket haul — the sixth time in 28 Tests he has taken five or more in an innings — was built on intelligence, control, and a refusal to be seduced by the idea that pace alone wins Test matches. He plays. That is settled.

Shaheen Shah Afridi’s three wickets came at a cost of 113 runs across the match, but he showed improvement as the Test progressed and his importance to Pakistan’s long-term bowling identity is not in question. He plays.

The real debate is around the supporting cast. Hasan Ali’s two wickets in Mirpur came expensively. Sylhet’s surface, with its history of spin, raises legitimate questions about whether a four-seam strategy is appropriate, or whether Sajid Khan’s off-spin alongside Noman Ali represents a more considered response to conditions. Khurram Shahzad, who arguably should have played the first Test, remains in contention. These decisions matter — not just for Sylhet, but as signals of whether Pakistan’s management is thinking about conditions and match-ups, or simply selecting on reputation and habit.

Tinkering for its own sake is dangerous. Deliberate, evidence-based selection changes are not tinkering. They are what a management under pressure is supposed to do.

What Sarfaraz must answer

There is a broader question sitting beneath all of this that has not been asked loudly enough: what, precisely, is Sarfaraz Ahmed’s vision for this Test side?

His appointment was fast-tracked. His credentials as a player and captain are beyond dispute. But a head coach is not a former captain — he is a strategist, a communicator, a builder of systems and environments. Through one Test in Mirpur, there was little visible evidence of a framework that distinguishes this regime from the ones that preceded it. The batting collapses that defined Gillespie’s tenure have continued into Sarfaraz’s. The selection uncertainty that plagued previous panels has not been resolved. The gap between Pakistan’s talent and Pakistan’s output remains as wide as ever.

Sylhet is Sarfaraz’s first genuine test as a coach — not Mirpur, where the squad was already set and the match already underway before his influence could meaningfully take hold. The decisions made in the next 48 hours, and the way the team performs across five days in Sylhet, will begin to tell us whether Pakistan have appointed a coach or merely a caretaker.

The verdict

Bangladesh are a better organised, more purposeful, and more confident Test side than Pakistan right now. That sentence would have been unthinkable five years ago. It is simply true today.

Pakistan have the talent to compete in Sylhet. Babar Azam, properly positioned and in the form his ability demands, is a match-winner. Abbas with the ball is a match-winner. Azan Awais and Abdullah Fazal have shown, in their first Test, that Pakistan’s next generation has substance. But talent without structure is just potential — and potential does not win Test matches in Sylhet against a Bangladesh side that has now beaten Pakistan three consecutive times.

If Pakistan lose in Sylhet, the conversations will move well beyond selection headaches and batting collapses. The tours of the West Indies and England — where the conditions will be more demanding, the scrutiny more intense, and the margin for error even smaller — will come into view, and the questions about this team’s readiness for that challenge will be impossible to ignore.

Pakistan do not need to be told they are in crisis. They know. What they need, in Sylhet, is the courage to make the right decisions — not the comfortable ones — and then the discipline to execute them across five days.

The ground has a habit of humbling the expected victor.

Pakistan can no longer afford to be humbled.