Babar Azam is playing domestic first-class cricket for the first time since 2019, after the Pakistan Test captain asked the PCB to find him a team in the ongoing President's Trophy Grade 1 tournament. He has joined Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) as a guest player.
Babar has not scored a Test century since December 2022, when he made 161 in a draw against New Zealand in Karachi. Since the start of 2023, his Test average has fallen to 30.43 — more than 12 runs below his career average — a stretch that has drawn sustained scrutiny of both his form and his captaincy. Rather than wait for the issue to resolve itself against international bowling, Babar approached the board directly, asking to be placed in a first-class side purely to get back to playing the longer format regularly. The PCB responded by arranging his guest appearance with OGDCL in the tournament already underway.
Babar's only previous stint in Pakistan's domestic first-class system came in 2019, when he captained the now-defunct Central Punjab side to victory over Northern in the final of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. Pakistan's domestic structure has since been reorganised more than once, meaning his return also comes into a set-up quite different from the one he last played in seven years ago.
A sitting Test captain choosing to play domestic cricket mid-tournament, rather than in the off-season, is an unusual step, and it signals how seriously Babar is treating the dip in his red-ball numbers. First-class cricket against domestic bowling attacks is no guarantee of a fix for a form issue that has shown up against international opposition, but the move at least gives him competitive match time outside the pressure of a Test squad environment, ahead of Pakistan's next red-ball assignments.
It's rare to see a player of Babar's stature request a route back into domestic cricket rather than simply working through issues in the nets — the move reads as a genuine attempt to address a three-year slide in his Test numbers rather than a token gesture. Whether time in the President's Trophy translates into runs against New Zealand, England or whoever Pakistan face next in the format remains to be seen, but for a captain under growing pressure over his own output, being seen to take the problem seriously is itself a meaningful signal to teammates and selectors alike.
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Babar Azam's domestic return, his Test statistics and the OGDCL signing are verified against same-day reporting, current as of September 15, 2026.
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