Inzamam naive or deft? A tough call
Bobbilli Vijay Kumar
[TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
BIRMINGHAM, Sep 19: Is Inzamam-ul-Haq naive to the point of being comical or does he have the sharpest wit among current cricket captains?
This is probably the most exciting question doing the rounds on the periphery of the Champions Trophy after the Pakistan skippers last two press conferences.
Inzamam appears to be half in sleep as he ambles in or out. His eyes are blank and aloof; there’s a hint of an innocent smile on his lips and a nonchalant, almost indifferent, look on his rotund face.
Ask him a question and he turns towards you like a heavy roller, that too in slow motion. He replies softly and quickly, in a deadpan tone, without any sign of emotion. And you wonder if he’s really serious or if he’s joking.
The other day he had the entire press gallery in guffaws. One of the Pakistani reporters wanted to know if it was a good strategy to rely so much on a part-time spinner like Shahid Afridi. Inzamam scratched his hair in bewilderment, squinted his eyes and remarked: “Thank you for giving me this piece of news. I didn’t know that Afridi was a part-time spinner.”
A couple of days earlier, another intrepid reporter asked him how things were between coach Bob Woolmer and the players. “Is everything all right after almost two months?” Inzamam nodded his head slowly, and very conspiratorially remarked: “So far.”
Not a word more. What he really meant was, of course, left to the imagination and interpretation of everybody present. Inzamam is like that: honest, to the point and not worried about the implication of his words.
When somebody asked him how it felt to play against India when they didn’t have a big star like Tendulkar and a couple of key bowlers like Zaheer Khan and Balaji, he shot back: " Arre , why should I bother about that. It’s their headache."
The clincher, however, came as the press conference was drawing to an end. When a highly accented television reporter rattled off a long question, he stared back emptily for a few seconds, then turned towards his manager and whispered: " Ki bola woh ?"
He, however, didn’t realise that he was whispering into the mike: everybody could hear him loud and clear.
Inzamam is, of course, even more funny when he starts batting, or to be precise when he gets down to the business of running between the wickets. At times, he’s so quick that he reaches the other end even before his partner can realise what’s happening; at other times, he’s so slow that the same partner can finish two runs while he’s still contemplating his next move.
Inzamam, however, doesn’t think anything is wrong with his running or his judgment. “It’s not my fault really,” he had once famously said. “It’s just that my partner doesn’t seem to understand me.”
Maybe, it’s also just a coincidence that his jersey number is 8; or more likely, some naughty prankster in the team might have convinced him that it was a very lucky and auspicious number. One can almost hear the four deadly words — one big fat lady — every time he enters the field
