Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Is ist me or is Inzaman getting bigger and bigger. I heard at TKC they said the team could eat all the liked and Inzaman had to be catered for 3 times and then only went out after the video replay… 
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
another story from TKC
**
Nihari at The Oval**
By Khalid Hussain
LONDON: The request came from Inzamam-ul-Haq. The Pakistan captain wanted Nihari for lunch on Thursday, among other Desi stuff. So Nihari it was.
Like every other day on this marathon tour, food for the Pakistani dressing room came from Southall as Inzamam’s men took on England in the fourth Test here at The Oval. Nihari was the main course in a menu that also included Haleem, which came at the request of Shahid Afridi.
They travel around the world and rarely get to be home but leading Pakistani cricketers have still not acquired a taste for food from other parts of the globe. Their taste buds are accustomed to the curries, Tikkas, Biryanis and Kababs and they are happy with that. “These boys can’t live without Pakistani food,” says Dilawar Chaudhry, the owner of Tikka Kabab Centre (TKC), the Pakistan cricket team’s restaurant of choice in England.
Since the day the team arrived here from Pakistan in June, their food has mostly come from Southall. They don’t call the place mini-Punjab for nothing. Centred on the Broadway, Southall is home to London’s Punjabi community and boasts dozens of Pakistani and Indian restaurants.
Dilawar and his staff know the taste and requirements of the Pakistani cricketers. The Chaudhry family has catered for players visiting from back home for thirty years and counts that tradition among their proud achievements.
“These players are our heroes,” says Dilawar who refers to Pakistan’s cricketers as the country’s second biggest export after mangoes. “We are always happy to serve them,” he adds. Bags carrying ‘TKC specials’ travel almost everywhere the team travels for its matches in England. And the food is always on the house.
“We even sent food supplies for these boys when they went to the West Indies (earlier this year),” says Dilawar. “I sent one of my men on a flight there with frozen Tikkas, Kababs and other stuff. We did it because the players felt they would not get anything that is worth eating out there.”
Dilawar was nine when his father invited the Pakistan team in 1974 when they came to England with Intikhab Alam as their captain. “My father knew Khan Mohammad and that lunch was the beginning of a long relationship with our cricketers.”
Inzamam fell in love with the Southall food when he came to England in 1992. The Pakistanis living in Britain were in love with the hulk from Multan, as his debut tour of this country came soon after the World Cup in Australia where the youngster was one of the stars of Pakistan’s memorable Cup-winning triumph.
Dilawar says most of the team players are always asking for high-carb stuff like Makhan Parathas and Haleem but he dodges the demands as much as he can. “They are top class sportsmen and we know that they can’t afford food with too many carbohydrates. So we include Chinese dishes and other lighter stuff as much as we can.”
The all-time favourite of this Pakistani team, however, is the restaurant’s mixed grilled platter. “They are always calling for it,” says Dilawar, a commercial pilot who has opted to run three family restaurants in Southall rather than pursuing a career as a pilot. He doesn’t regret the decision, at least when his favourite cricketers are in England.
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Nihari and Haleem for Lunch suring a test match 
. I thought Woolmer had put the team on strict diet with no curry on the tour. However this article states that players have been having food from TKC for the whole tour. The article states that Pakistani players can never stay away from desi food. The owner had to send frozen tikka’s and kebabs to West Indies for them…
All I can imagine right now is Inzi eating Nihari and Haleem for Lunch during the match:omg:
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
I miss food already :(
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Why do different articles keep mentioning TKC's Mr Dilawar has a commercial pilot license. Is this meant to be some sort of a heads up for anti terrorism officials?
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Regarding Akmal not doing good in one or two games. I don't think there is enough cause for concern that we go around pressing panic buttons already. This is his first series in a different environment and it takes time to adjust.
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Kamran Akmal had another dropped catch of Pietersen off Kaneria in the second innings...the tally for this test alone is three missed dismissals...And for the series he must have close to twenty...too high even Moin did not concede these many chances...
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Attack on Inzy’s ‘izzat’ was the final straw
At the heart of the crisis that hit the Oval Test are two simple factors. The first and overriding one is that the relationship between the Pakistan cricket team and the Australian umpire Darrell Hair has completely broken down. Indeed Hair is the 21st century equivalent of David Constant, the English umpire through the 1980s who so infuriated Pakistan that it led their captain at the time, Imran Khan, to call for neutral officials.
The other is that Hair’s action in deciding that the Pakistanis had tampered with the ball, though without naming a player who might have been responsible, meant that for the Pakistan captain, Inzamam-ul-Huq, it was not merely a questionable decision but a slur on the entire team and therefore the whole nation.
As far as Inzaman was concerned, what Hair was doing was to call into question his own, and Pakistan’s, izzat.
Izzat is an Urdu word that can be translated as ‘honour’, but it means much more than that, and izzat is a much prized comodity in the subcontinent. It is something that Inzamam, a quiet, deeply religious man, values highly.
Inzamam is one of those Pakistanis who passionately believes that a man can lose everything he has, including his life - but not his izzat. For him, the manner in which Hair took the decision as much as the decision itself meant that Inzamam’s personal izzat, and that of his beloved Pakistan, had been besmirched.
It was in order to assert that he and his team were still honourable that the Pakistanis decided that they would delay their entry on to the field after tea for a few minutes to signify their protest and reclaim some virtue.
Unfortunately, this protest backfired.
Hair took it as a sign that the Pakistanis were threatening not to play. He came off the field and, going to the Pakistani dressing room, told Inzamam that if his team did not take the field as the umpires walked out again they would forfeit the match.
While this was entirely correct according to the rules of the game, the manner in which Hair delivered the ultimatum further infuriated the Pakistanis. Still recovering from being seen as men without honour, they felt further humiliated, and for some time stood shocked in their dressing room wondering what was going on.
As they did so, Hair and Billy Doctrove walked out on to the field of play - followed by the England batsmen - and then decided the Pakistanis were not coming and so took off the bails. It was only after they had returned to the pavilion that a still bewildered Inzamam started to lead his team out, only to find that the umpires had walked off and were not coming back.
In the Pakistanis’ eyes, if Hair’s initial decision was a slur on their nation, then his subsequent warning that they would forfeit the match was hugely insensitive.
All this would not have mattered had Hair got on with the Pakistanis. Imran used to say, comparing Constant with Dickie Bird, that Bird also made mistakes but unlike Constant did not rub the players up the wrong way. Players accepted his decisions even when they did not like them because they liked the man.
Not so with Hair. Pakistan and Hair have a history going back several years.
A story common in Pakistan cricket is that back in the mid-1990s, on a tour of Australia, Hair lectured the then Pakistan captain and told him:** “I hope you people will not in this series carry on appealing like monkeys.”**
This may be an apocryphal story, but it is one that is widely believed in Pakistani cricket and, of course, has racial overtones.
Things worsened during last winter’s tour of Pakistan by England, which Hair also umpired and where some of his decisions did not please the Pakistanis. They made their feelings about the matter very clear.
So the Pakistanis were most surprised when they found that Hair was to umpire in this series.
His appointment raises questions about the choice of umpires made by the cricket department of the ICC headed by former South Africa wicketkeeper David Richardson. Some Pakistanis are all too ready to see a conspiracy here. This may be fanciful, but it exposes the curious nature of inter-national cricket, where the ICC have nothing like the power that Fifa have in world football. They appoint umpires and match referees but the match is basically between the two countries and while the match referee can sanction players, it is the umpires that are supreme and whose authority cannot be questioned.
The ICC are powerless, and this match may expose that cruelly.
SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/sport/2006/08/21/scbose21.xml
Re: PAK in ENG (2006) - Media Coverage Center - Post articles here
Cricinfo Blog: The Oval debacle
Posted 3 hours, 8 minutes ago in Pakistan in England
The decision of Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove to award England victory at The Oval has created a massive reaction. Geoffrey Boycott, writing in The Daily Telegraph describes the events as “farcical and reflected little credit](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/08/21/scboyc21.xml) on the England and Wales Cricket Board or the International Cricket Council”.The ICC must be blind or stupid not to have realised that there is history between Darrell Hair, the umpire who accused them of changing the nature of the ball, and Pakistan. There were mutterings after the Headingley Test that Pakistan didn’t like Hair’s attitude.Mihir Bose, cricket historian, feels the attack on Inzy’s ‘izzat’ (honour) was the final straw.Inzamam is one of those Pakistanis who passionately believes that a man can lose everything he has, including his life - but not his izzat. For him, the manner in which Hair took the decision as much as the decision itself meant that Inzamam’s personal izzat, and that of his beloved Pakistan, had been besmirched.Derek Pringle, Daily Telegraph’s cricket correspondent, says pride, principle and prejudice replaced runs, wickets and catches.
“Everyone who follows the game, and has its interests at heart, needs a full explanation now, not least from the umpires and match referee,” writes Mike Selvey in The Guardian.
In the same paper Lawrence Booth writes how Hair’s future is in doubt.
Simon Barnes writes in The Times “a small judgment about a small infringement of the laws created a day of outrage, distress and fury”.Pakistan were not accused of ball-tampering yesterday. They were judged and found guilty by the umpire, Darrell Hair, as they sought to halt England’s second-innings resurgence. This is a profoundly serious business in cricketing terms. It is not like calling a woman a tease. It is like calling her a whore. Well, there are women who are whores, but you’d better be bloody sure of your facts before making the accusation.Kamran Abbasi, writing in the Dawn, the Pakistan daily, writes that Hair has a track record of poor decisions and sparking controversy in matches involving Asian teams and feels that Pakistan would have been as mightily offended if the umpire involved had not been Hair. .
James Lawton says in The Independent “a Test match died at the Oval yesterday for a lack of trust between those who play cricket and those who administer it”.
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/surfer/archives/2006/08/the_oval_debacl.php
Its great to see that most people in the media are supporting Pakistan, however the uninformed public have a negative view.