I don’t want to jinx them. Seriously. But this is beginning to look pretty unreal. Whatever happened to Pakistan cricket team? Ever since they changed their name (“Team Pakistan”) and gave real powers to a qualified professional coach (Woolmer), the team is messing with its pedigree. The team seems to have forgotten that it is not supposed to win everything in sight. It is not supposed to be professional. The only thing they were supposed to be predictable was the utter unpredictability of their performance. A giant on one day and a sheep the next.
The Pakistan team I knew was always bunch of extremely talented players, who were aptly labeled the “Most Unpredictable Team”. They’d force their way to the World Cup finals (1999) by crushing everyone in sight (except Bangladesh) and then fold meekly in front of Australia to the ultimate embarrassment of their fans. Even at the height of our success in 1992, the team was facing one crushing defeat after another in the preliminary rounds of the World Cup, before rising from the slumber and knocking out New Zealand and England to win the cup. The team I knew would win some in a grand fashion, and lose some more at an even larger scale. They’d bowl out India (under Imran Khan) for a paltry 125 and then get themselves bowled out for under 100. This was a team that at one time boasted of seven (7) former captains in its line-up with all the remaining five (4) hallucinating about being captain as well. There were as many groups in the team as there were days in a week. And then there was the dark side. Blessed with out-of-this world superstars, how many of their results were pre-conceived as a result of match-fixing, we’ll never really know. Bottom line is, they were supposed to be a bunch of cheats who’d sell their mother if the price was right. They had dishearten their followers (except Chacha Cricket) and make everyone highly skeptical of their results.
Where did this current team come from?
I was looking at the team line up yesterday and I was wondering about the strength of our batting line up. With Afridi back in the line-up, we have Malik, Afridi and Razzaq as proper all-rounders and then we have Naveed, Akhtar and Sami, the wanna-be all-rounders. Our ‘keeper has bludgeoned the living day-lights out of bowling attacks in India, West Indies and now Pakistan, and our three veteran top-order batsmen combine for more than 650 ODI games between them. Can there be a stronger and better batting and bowling line-up? Of course, there can be. And to be fair, the nucleus of the team was about the same when they lost a home series to India last year and then got a crushing away series defeat in Australia. Since then, they have not looked back. Drawn back-to-back series in India and West Indies, when their main strike bowler wasn’t even playing. And now decimating the English team at home. On current form, there is no doubt in my mind that they can take anyone today and come out fighting. May not win everything, but will still make their supporters proud.
Can they still lose one or both of the next two ODI’s? Absolutely. Though the manner in which Pakistan beat England in the last test match and the third ODI suggests something different. Something far more interesting than just a statistic of win or loss. The goal is no longer to just win; it seems the new target is complete mental annihilation of the opponents. There was hardly any need for Pakistan to bat on the morning of day four in Lahore test. Yet they did and smacked the hapless English attack to all parts of the ground. An English commentator later said for Flintoff, the season came to an end on that morning in Lahore. His first ball duck against a Kaneria googly the next day was just a confirmation of how tortured he felt facing a team on a roll. Third ODI saw Razzaq launch an all-out attack against the English bowling. While it may just be a personal redemption for Razzaq and a I-am-back message after his medical leave, the impact was visible when England came out to bat. Having Afridi come down the order means that on every top-order wicket that falls, the opponents look even more worryingly at the Pakistan dressing room to see if it’s the “Mad Afridi” who is making an appearance.
This is a different team. Its brave. Its professional. Most importantly, it’s a team. I am not going to talk about who is responsible for the change. We have spend enough hours heaping praise at Woolmer and Inzi. And a reformed Akhtar and more responsible Younis and Yousaf. And a bunch of very talented youngsters. But the bottom-line remains. This is not the Pakistan team we knew. This is something special. Something interesting. This team is finally worth looking forward to. And to give our fullest whole hearted support.
Good job, guys!
(Written exclusively for Gupshup by Faisal)
