The past isn't always better, but the grimmer the present, the better it ages. Pakistan are not the first side to feel beholden to nostalgia, but at a time when they are statistically a worse Test team than just about any other in their history, it is objectively true.
In the absence of any encouragement for a bright Test future the PCB can realistically sell, they have turned back the clock three years, admitting the failure of a project that had, in truth, existed on borrowed time for at least half its lifespan. Babar Azam, replaced as captain immediately after Pakistan's most impressive away series performance in the past decade by Shan Masood, whose horror stint only seemed to go from bad to worse, now finds the PCB turning, cap in in hand, back to him. He will not have been their first choice, but like a subsidised lodger who storms out of his rented room after a quarrel before realising he has nowhere else to go, the board has meekly turned right back around and asked Babar if they might co-habit once more.
It returns Pakistan cricket, or so nostalgia may have you believe, to a happier time. The early 2020s now seems like a place when optimism blossomed. Pakistan had returned home to play Test cricket, Babar had only just entered his true all-format golden period, overcoming his tricky start to the longest format. They had begun to build an identity that felt faithful to what Pakistan cricket likes to believe it is, moving on from their heavy dependence on Yasir Shah in their UAE years to one of the youngest, most exciting pace bowling attacks in the red-ball game.
It was underscored by a thrilling 2-0 win over South Africa in a series dominated right to the last by pace bowlers, Babar's first as Test captain. In Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah - two men now left out of their upcoming series due to concerns over fitness and their diminishing interest in Test cricket - Pakistan boasted precociously talented and lethally quick pace bowlers. Babar averaged 50 with the bat as captain. Even economically and politically, there was a hint of looking ahead to a brighter future; the country was just moving out of the Covid pandemic having escaped the absolute worst of it. Some would argue it was a freer society, one less governed by fear and censorship - both self-imposed and external.
Of course, nostalgia has a way of playing wicked tricks with the mind. Pakistan might have taken for granted the kind of performances and series wins they would kill for now, away in Sri Lanka right at the end of that experiment, for one. They even, if you can believe it, went to Bangladesh at the end of 2021 and came away with two crushing wins. But it was also the time when the diseased seeds that now bear such rotten fruit were sown, more out of incompetence than malice. When Australia visited for their first Test engagement in 24 years, Pakistan prepared pitches so moribund they were more graveyard than road. PCB chairman Ramiz Raja openly accepted responsibility for it at the time, though has since sought to cast Babar in the role of chief protagonist in the matter.
Babar's own captaincy record - 10 wins and six defeats - might look positively Waugh-esque in light of what was to follow, but there was a reason Pakistan looked for a new leader after more than three years of Babar. Just before that series win in Sri Lanka, Pakistan had gone an astonishing eight Tests - all at home - without a single win. It included an especially dismal thrashing at England's hands - to date their only 3-0 series whitewash at home.
Babar's reading of the game, and overall vibe as a leader, was insipid, especially the way he used his spinners, contrasting unfavourably with what Ben Stokes had done on surfaces the England captain seemed to understand better than his Pakistani counterpart. It was all capped off by a bizarre assertion at the end of the third Test that Pakistan had dominated each match, prompting this site to compare him, a touch melodramatically, to Nicolae Ceausescu.
There is no pretense that Babar's appointment is a silver bullet. It is a marriage of convenience between a board that found itself out of options, and a player searching for glory that seemed inevitable in those halcyon days of the early 2020s. At 31, there is also the weary recognition, based on a decade's sample size, that Babar isn't quite as gifted at constantly adapting and improving as might have been true of a player of his calibre. This isn't so much a software upgrade as it is a machine being switched off and on again, and hoping it gets back to a semblance of usability.
However, Babar should be liberated by the undeniable fact that, even in an era when the tug-of-war between player and board seems to have swung so decisively in the other direction, it is the player who won this bout. Even an enfeebled Babar - one nowhere close to the height of his batting powers - was Pakistan cricket's best option when it needed somewhere to turn, and with no obviously foreseeable candidates in the near term and the Test side at rock bottom, there is no reason Babar's second stint cannot enjoy a similar length to its first. It offers him a chance at rebuilding his legacy as a Test player and captain, protected somewhat by a star status and legions of fans that his predecessor never enjoyed.
There will be no quick turnaround, though, with Babar coming up against the same glass ceiling Masood did - the quality of his players, and the value Pakistan's biggest stars are willing to ascribe to Test cricket. But with no fresh material expected, the PCB have decided to get the band back together, and replay an old classic. Pakistan may not be looking forward to the prospect of away series in West Indies and England, but they can, at least, look back.