Providing the oomph
Osman Samiuddin
December 26, 2006
Tennis without McEnroe, boxing without Tyson, Australia without Warne: Take the latter out of the equation and you lose, other than some of the greatest talents, sports’ roguish charm, an essential farrago of enfant terrible mischief, volatility, drama and an element of the unknown and danger. They are a reason to tune in, get hooked. Sort of like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, without the jelly.
Take Pakistan out of cricket in 2006 and you lose the same. What happened, after all, of any interest without them? Australia won the Ashes - really? Australia won the Champions Trophy - well, blow me down, there’s a surprise. England was as successful at ODIs as Americans were at military adventures, the BCCI made more money than most economies and Murali took a gazillion more wickets. You could have penned these forecasts 360 days ago (and put some money on while at it).
What you probably couldn’t have guessed was this: that a Test would be forfeited for the first time ever, that an elite panel umpire would be sacked for making, according to the laws, two correct decisions, and that two leading bowlers would test positive for a banned steroid, be slapped with bans and then have those bans overturned less than a month later. All brought to you, as sponsors would have it, courtesy Pakistan.
If you’ve been following Pakistan since the 80s, the October revolution might have rung a bell or two, bringing as it did a new chairman and three captaincy changes in three days. As would have Shahid Afridi’s classic “I’m retiring…wait I’m not” act. Then again, if you’d been following them for the last two years only, you wouldn’t have predicted that either. Yes, in the year that Justin Timberlake brought sexy back, Pakistan brought crazy back. They gave cricket its scandal, they brought - before the Ashes - cricket onto front and back pages. They gave cricket its oomph.
On the field, there was real nothingness about their results. They won, drew and lost nearly an equal number of matches (four wins, five draws, three losses) and only won one more ODI (11) than they lost. Test series wins against India, Sri Lanka and the West Indies were all significant but the one they lost - against England - was probably the most significant.
Read full story here:
http://content-pak.cricinfo.com/pakistan/content/story/273822.html
Osman has to be one of the finest Cricket Journalists I’ve read. He has what they call " way with the words" :k: