The time when no questions needed to be asked before considering whether Pakistan could win a Test match has long since passed, when logic was no kind of checkpoint before the outcome. In today's more austere times, two questions must be posed before determining whether a Test is in Pakistan's grasp.
"Is it impossible?" It is an entirely fair question, because if something isn't actually possible, like sprouting wings and taking flight, or beating Australia in Australia, there seems little point in worrying too much about actually doing it. It is a question Pakistan have been asking themselves, and correctly answering, for more than three decades, so there's little point trying to change a system that works so accurately.
"Is it difficult?" This is a question Pakistan have begun asking themselves more recently, but have realised things are simpler if it's answered much the same way as the first. Sometimes things are so difficult they can seem to fall into the first category. These have recently involved taking 20 wickets in a Test match at home without committing crimes against horticulture, or keeping enough fast bowlers fit and willing to play Test cricket to occasionally bother a speed gun past 135kph.
When the answer to both those questions is yes, Pakistan's supporters, whipped into submission by the blunt stick of reality, have sullenly accepted they will not get the outcome that previous generations were irritatingly promised at semi-regular junctures. There are sides out there that are better organised than Pakistan, or have more money and/or more influence, and will eventually outcompete unsustainable and increasingly infrequent bursts of random genius.
But when the answer to both those questions is no, and Pakistan still lose, that resignation spills over into anger.
This is what Babar Azam, for all his shortcomings, has understood perhaps better than anyone else in Pakistan cricket. In the years since he last had the chance to mould a Pakistan side in any format, he has always appeared to follow one maxim: if it's doable reasonably easily, do it, even if you do no more. To the frequent outrage of a nation that has challenged him to extend his reach beyond his grasp, he has stubbornly stuck by that maxim, which he has by and large followed through in his output.
You could almost bank on him scoring a hundred on a flat track in Lahore. In his heyday, he would rarely spurn the chance to score a T20 half-century, even if it came in 40 balls. As Pakistan were a mid-table ODI side, they should finish mid-table, and Babar led them to fifth in two World Cup campaigns. As Test captain in his first stint, Pakistan beat South Africa at home, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka away, drew an away Test series against West Indies, and one against New Zealand at home. All reasonably achievable things, and all reasonably and reliably achieved.
That boring stability might be the antithesis of what Pakistan cricket's DNA is, but it was entirely characteristic of Babar himself, and his ability to shape his side in his own image was remarkably consistent. It meant the system could survive the occasional spike and trough, like a remarkable win over India in the 2021 T20 World Cup or a run to the final of the same tournament the following year, balanced out by a disastrous 2024 T20 World Cup, or a home Test whitewash by England.
When the PCB decided it did not wish to tether Pakistan cricket's mast to Babar's seeming lack of ambition, they realised how useful moderating expectations can be. Pakistan went on to lose 12 of the 16 Tests that followed, a full third of them home and away against Bangladesh - a side they had never previously lost to in their history. Winning any Tests required changing the very manner in which home pitches were prepared, and this still required the lottery of a coin toss to spin their way. In the first full cycle in which Babar did not lead, Pakistan finished rock-bottom in the World Test Championship (WTC) table; in the current cycle, they were again ninth when the PCB went back to Babar, armband in tow.
Over the last fortnight, Babar has appeared to demonstrate his ongoing commitment to perfecting the plausible. It doesn't take much to light the touchpaper of criticism when it comes to Babar, but what sparked it in the first Test against West Indies was, even by its own standards, bizarre. Pakistan had imploded into a familiar fourth-innings collapse chasing 211, the scorecard reading a sorry 71 for 9 with Babar batting alongside Mohammad Abbas.
He had earlier taken a single to expose Mohammad Ali to the strike before he was dismissed, and in what ended up being a 49-run final partnership with Abbas, the No. 11 faced more balls than Babar. In Pakistan, Babar took significant heat for making no concerted effort to farm the strike, or play any big shots to show, at least performatively, that he was still trying to chase the target down. It missed the whole point of Babar's outlook on the game; it wasn't possible to win that game anymore, or at least it was extremely difficult. His captaincy would be made or broken by what was more realistically attainable.
Like levelling the series with a win in the second Test. Babar had led Pakistan to a similar win five years ago, and Babar understood that the margin between the sides wasn't as great as the margin of defeat in Tarouba suggested. Victory became all the more achievable when West Indies prepared a curiously spin-friendly track that perfectly concealed Pakistan's lack of pace bowling.
This was as much victory by the cold numbers as a Babar-led side has achieved. Pakistan's batters are better than their West Indies counterparts; in a head-to-head between the top seven in each side, the visiting batters boast better averages in all but one case.
Abdullah Shafique's ability is better than his form, and in any case, he has thrived under Babar, one of his most vocal backers. Under the current Pakistan captain, he averages 58.50; when Babar wasn't leading, that number dropped down to 20.52 across ten Tests. Babar, too, thrives under Babar. He averages 53.33 as captain; in the 13 Tests between his captaincy stints, that number was cut by half, to 27.26.
West Indies had not made things easy for themselves by not picking a specialist spinner to partner Jomel Warrican, but Pakistan, whatever the merits of dropping Mohammad Abbas, had added Sajid Khan to partner Ali Usman. And in a decisive final hour on the third evening, Babar kept the two on relentlessly. Their accuracy stifled a fragile West Indies line-up that was further frazzled by Babar crowding the bat. An extra catcher first did for the nightwatcher Jayden Seales, before the pressure induced Roston Chase into scooping the day's final ball back to Usman. Not especially complex captaincy, but with that quality in his side, Babar knew this was a match-up Pakistan should win.
And if Pakistan should win matches, Babar generally makes sure they do. In a curious statistical anomaly that will almost certainly be smoothed over when exposed to more time, Babar has now led Pakistan to nine wins in 12 away Tests; it is the best record for any captain to have led in 10 or more Tests, ever. A closer look will reveal those wins to have come against West Indies, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, but, as the last three years showed, there is a price to pay for assuming those wins can be taken for granted.
With Pakistan ten runs away from victory, Babar decided to cut loose. He rocked back to pull Jomel Warrican, West Indies' best bowler in the game, over cow corner for six. It was a short delivery that was there to be hit, but there wasn't much wrong with the next ball, given more flight and landing on fourth stump. Babar waltzed down the pitch, unfurling a lofted drive over extra-cover so classical it could have been set to music.
It was a wistful glimpse of the Babar that could have been. For the real Babar rather than the artistic caricature a nation has carried in its heads for a decade, it was about time Pakistan won a Test match. And so he led them to it.