Pakistan Test captain Babar Azam will return to domestic first-class cricket for the first time in seven years as part of his efforts to regain form in the longer format. The 31-year-old batter is set to join Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) as a guest player in the ongoing President’s Trophy Grade 1 tournament.

Babar’s decision comes after a challenging period for Pakistan’s Test side, which recently suffered a 3-0 series defeat to England and lost World Test Championship points due to a slow over-rate penalty at Edgbaston. The series loss left Pakistan in ninth place in the ICC Test rankings and anchored at the bottom of the WTC table.

The third Test against England saw significant changes with seven players dropped, and although Babar was absent for the first match due to injury and struggled against England’s short-pitched bowling early on, he showed some promise in the second innings of the final Test with a well-crafted 76.

In a move to stay connected with the longer version of the game and enhance his performance, Babar requested the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to facilitate his participation in domestic first-class cricket. The PCB arranged for him to play alongside other Pakistani internationals currently featuring in the President’s Trophy, including ODI captain Shaheen Shah Afridi with KRL and T20I skipper Salman Ali Agha representing the Kingsmen Academy.

According to OGDCL’s sports head Farah, Babar is expected to arrive in Pakistan from the United Kingdom on September 16 and will join the OGDCL squad the following day. The team will assess whether he will feature from the second or third match of the tournament.

Babar has faced criticism for his limited engagement with domestic red-ball cricket since December 2019, when he last played a first-class match for Central Punjab during their Quaid-e-Azam Trophy title campaign. His Test batting has also seen a dip; since the start of 2023, he has averaged 30.43, significantly below his career Test average of 42.98. In 39 innings during this period, he has scored only eight half-centuries and has endured an 18-innings drought without surpassing 41 runs.

Though he has recorded four fifties in his last five Tests, including a highest score of 88 in Pakistan’s recent overseas victory against the West Indies, Babar has struggled to convert starts into substantial scores. That win ended Pakistan’s sequence of eight consecutive away Test defeats and marked their first overseas Test triumph since July 2023.

The presence of established players like Babar, Afridi, and Salman in the domestic circuit is viewed as a strategic effort by the PCB to provide the national squad with more competitive match practice ahead of upcoming series against Sri Lanka and England. Pakistan cricket supporters will be keen to see whether increased domestic exposure aids Babar and his teammates in enhancing their Test performances.