Babar Azam learned about the biggest shake-up of his captaincy the same way the public did. Speaking in Birmingham the day before the third Test, he said nobody from the board consulted him before seven teammates were sent home, and that the explanation for the timing belongs to the officials who made the call. He tried to frame the overhaul as an opportunity for the newcomers rather than a crisis for the group, even with his own series reduced to 21 runs from three innings.
The Press Conference Confession
Babar didn’t dress up how blindsided he felt. Asked directly whether he’d been consulted on the changes, he gave a flat no, and admitted he only learned the details after they’d already been decided elsewhere. Pressed further, he said the board would have to explain its own reasoning, since the thought process behind the decision wasn’t something he’d been part of.
There was no bitterness in how he talked about the players coming in, though. He called their arrival a golden opportunity, the kind of chance a struggling squad rarely hands out this openly. With the series already lost, he leaned on a simpler message for his group: play without fear, and trust each other in difficult conditions, because a senior player’s job now is carrying more of that weight than before.
Pakistan Babar Azam Edgbaston Squad Changes
The scale of what happened became clear once the paperwork landed. On September 1, a day after the Lord’s defeat was sealed, the PCB sent home seven players, Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Agha, Ali Usman, Aamir Jamal, Muhammad Awais Zafar and Khurram Shahzad, and called up seven replacements in their place.
Sent Home vs Called Up
| Players Sent Home | Players Called Up | Coaching Changes |
|---|---|---|
| Mohammad Rizwan | Saim Ayub (8 caps) | OUT: Sarfaraz Ahmed (Head Coach) |
| Imam-ul-Haq (injured) | Abdullah Fazal (2 caps) | IN: Mike Hesson |
| Salman Agha | Arafat Minhas (uncapped) | OUT: Umar Gul (Bowling Coach) |
| Ali Usman | Saad Baig, wk (uncapped) | IN: Ashley Noffke |
| Aamir Jamal | Muhammad Randhawa (uncapped) | |
| Muhammad Awais Zafar | Razaullah (uncapped) | |
| Khurram Shahzad | Muhammad Imran Jnr (uncapped) |
Five of the seven new faces have never played a Test. The board didn’t stop at personnel either, replacing head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed with Mike Hesson barely three series into his tenure, and swapping bowling coach Umar Gul for Ashley Noffke. Selectors were also called in to give written explanations for the original Rizwan and Imam picks within 24 hours of the announcement.
Backlash From Misbah And Afridi
The scale of the cull cost the board an ally almost immediately. Misbah-ul-Haq resigned from the selection committee in protest at what he saw as a wholesale, panicked response to one lost series. Shahid Afridi went further in public, calling it the most shocking decision he’d seen from a committee stacked with experienced selectors, and questioning why specialists built for T20 cricket were being parachuted into a Test squad mid-series.
Neither reaction moved the timeline. The Edgbaston squad now pairs Babar as captain with a roster of largely uncapped names, a group with almost no shared experience of what’s coming.
A Ground With A Painful History
That’s because nobody in the squad, Babar included, has ever played a Test on this ground. Pakistan have faced England here eight times since 1962 and lost five of them, with the other three drawn in 1992, 1996 and 2001, their only respite across eleven decades of trying. England, by contrast, have won 30 of their 57 Tests played at this same venue against all opponents, losing just 12 in total.
The series is already gone, England having taken the first two Tests, an innings-and-103-run rout at Headingley that Babar missed through a finger injury, followed by a 194-run defeat at Lord’s where he managed just 8 and 6 chasing 389. Pakistan have now lost 15 of their last 20 Tests and sit bottom of the World Test Championship table, a run of results that explains why the board acted so drastically. That history frames the Pakistan Babar Azam Edgbaston squad changes as more than a reshuffle; it reads like an admission that the old group had simply run out of answers, and this untested one is being asked to find some fast.