Re: The Miandad Theory
I was reading this interesting article and were amazed to read about Javed Miandad batting abilities…
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The Joy of Six: Great forgotten innings**
From Javed Miandad’s audacious bullying of Essex, to a gritty Nasser Hussain ton, here are half a dozen knocks to savour
Javed Miandad, 200 not out, Essex v Glamorgan, County Championship, 1 September 1981In a sense, all batsmen are doomed. They walk to the crease knowing that their innings is finite, and that it could end at any moment. It takes a very special person to relish that situation, but that’s how Javed Miandad played. He had the mentality of a fugitive, content to live on his wits no matter how great the risks. In fact, he needed those risks in order to thrive. The anarchy stimulated him. These qualities, coupled with a stunning imagination that allowed him to manoeuvre deliveries to unlikely locations, have never been in greater evidence than in Colchester on the first day of September 1981.
Javed was coming towards the end of a record-breaking season for Glamorgan, and had scored 200 not out in a total of 336 against Somerset a few weeks earlier. He did even better here, scoring 200 not out in a total of 311, with all the other batsmen scoring 89 between them. Javed scored 64 per cent of the runs in that innings, yet even such a staggering statistic barely touches the sides of his performance.
Glamorgan had been set 325 to win in 323 minutes, and soon collapsed to 44 for four on a pitch that was turning and bouncing viciously at pace. “They had no chance,” said Ray East, the Essex left-arm spinner “Batting on it was impossible.”
Except for Javed, who used his fast hands, fast feet and even faster brain to counter-attack East and his spin twin, David Acfield. It is on bad wickets that genius really asserts itself, and there have been few greater rough-track bullies than Javed. He began to work the spinners round the park, even pulling out the occasional reverse sweep, all the while collecting runs as an impish pickpocket might collect coins.
There was umpteen dashes down the track, with Javed sometimes running a long way past short leg and silly point to whip against the spin into the open spaces. On the face of it these were kamikaze charges, but Javed knew exactly what he was doing. He would also dummy the bowlers, shaping to run at them and then rocking back in his crease to take advantage if they dropped short. The audacity was breathtaking.
The relationship between bat and ball, hunted and hunter, was reversed to such an extent that Javed even started sledging the bowlers. “I love to talk while batting, it helps to settle my nerves,” he said. “I started ragging the Essex bowlers and I could tell that I was wearing them down. After a while I could sense they had started to panic.” It was hard to tell what was ragging more: the pitch or Javed.
Wickets continued to fall at the other end: 155 for five, 224 for six, 227 for seven. Then Javed added 43 for the eighth wicket with Robin Hobbs – who was out first ball. It was an astonishing partnership, with Javed facing every delivery for eight consecutive overs. His plan was simple: wait for the field to come up for the fifth delivery, hit over the top for a boundary, and then gleefully steal a single from the last ball. It was a delicious game of cat and mouse, except the mouse was terrorising the cat.
Hobbs went at 270 for eight, with 55 still needed. Javed added 21 with Malcolm Nash, who scored 1, and 20 with the last man Simon Daniels, who fell to a dodgy lbw decision. Essex had won by 13 runs, and Javed was still there, unbeaten on 200. “It was easily the best innings I’ve ever seen,” said East, an assessment shared by his team-mates and the umpire Ken Palmer. “We simply could not believe our eyes.”
the first ever victory by Pakistan in any tournament.