A Triumph Against The Odds — And Against The Cricketing Establishment Too

Posted by iPakistan on June 28, 2009

On the cricket field, there can be no doubt how this World Cup victory compares to the one in 1992: it doesn”t, really. The ODI World Cup in 1992 really, really meant something, while T20 cricket is still treated as somewhat of a sideshow in international cricket.

Compare the teams, too: the talismen of the teams were Wasim Akram and Shahid Afridi respectively — one is among the twenty greatest cricketers of all time, and one has so barely scratched the surface of his talent that it is criminal. Compare the batting: Miandad, Imran, Inzi and Malik against Younis, Misbah, Afridi and Malik (the other one). No contest. The bowling? Aaqib Javed against Abdul Razzaq? Mushtaq Ahmed against Saeed Ajmal? Wasim Akram against Umar Gul? Please.

And yet this victory is more liberating. Why? Because it represents more than just sporting accomplishment. Because it has freed Pakistan cricket and its followers from the shackles and chains that have been imposed on us by the ICC, the Taliban, western boards, incompetent security and board officials in Pakistan, and everyone else that has wittingly and unwittingly ensured that Pakistan will not see international cricket within its borders for the foreseeable future. Because Pakistan, which was already isolated as a cricketing destination, was at considerable risk of being isolated as a cricketing nation. Because we have loudly and unequivocally announced to the world: Hey! We still matter!

We have shown that international cricket needs a thriving Pakistan team. To his eternal credit, Sanjay Manjrekar — one of the world”s most underrated and incisive commentators and analysts — realized this, and said so as much in the turnaround-game against New Zealand. Without Pakistan, the world of cricket was on the verge of a becoming a super exclusive super-club of Australia, India, England and South Africa — who play each other pretty much twice as much as they do against everyone else. This was a victory for the underdogs, the acned and pimpled kids who never get invited to the cool-kids parties, the ones who are socially awkward and can never get the hot girls (even those that claim to like the eccentric types). This was a victory for Sri Lanka and New Zealand too, ironic since we knocked them both out, because they are in the same position we are: an afterthought in the increasingly exclusivist cricketing hierarchy.

And what a victory it was. The whole “Pakistan win with their usual unpredictability and glorious unknowability” angle is valid but seriously overblown. Pakistan have easily been the world”s best T20 international team since the format”s inception. Is it really that much of a surprise that we won? Our players have grown up playing a format remarkably similar — galli/mohalla cricket, intensely competitive games of 10-15 overs each on average, played over and over and over again well into the night, especially in Ramadan, games which place a premium on intelligence, skill, and ingenuity. We have the heady, sensible batsmen who don”t get fazed (Younis, Malik, Misbah), bowlers who can bowl dot balls through variations and accuracy (Gul, Afridi, Ajmal) and the all-important wildcards (Akmal, Afridi with the bat).

The only people for whom our T20 skills were a surprise were the ones who don”t actually pay attention to us, i.e. every non-Pakistani in the world. In that respect, our IPL boycott/unofficial ban (depending on which version of the story you believe) was the best thing that could have happened to us. The idea that the IPL was a cause of fatigue and thus the exit of teams like Australia and India is nonsense — you don”t get tired playing cricket for three and a half hours when you”ve been playing seven hour cricket your whole life.

But one advantage of not playing in the IPL that was true was that we were completely unheralded going in. Think about how ridiculous it was to hear foreign commentators being surprised at Gully”s bowling at the death or Afridi”s strangling of the middle overs. They simply didn”t know. And why would they? What was perfectly obvious to us was simply unknowable to them, because nobody plays us or pays us attention.

That said, we did make it immensely difficult for ourselves with our abject failures against England and Sri Lanka earlier in the tournament. But even those losses were due to rust (the fielding against England would make school-level coaches barf) and silly selection (Salman Butt? really?) rather than some fundamental problems with our cricket.

So while it is fair to say no one really expected us to win, no one really expected us to fail to contend at all either. Our victory didn”t come from nowhere, it just came from somewhere unlikely. While some of our strenghts could not have been foreseen — Afridi remembering how to bat, anyone? — some of our weaknesses (Misbah”s underwhelming form) could just as much be written off as unexpected. In short, we were a prototypical cup-winning team: we had all the ingredients for success, and were one of three or four legitimate contenders, and we caught fire at the right time, and that was the end of that. Italy in 2006, Australia in 1999, the Lakers in 2001 — all are examples of peaking at the right time, even when success never looked likely early on. Such is life.

We should all thank this team, not just because of the success they have allowed us to share in, not just because they have guaranteed that we won”t be pushed around on the international stage for the foreseeable future, but also because they are so damn likeable. With the charismatic and disarmingly honest Younis as captain, with the cancerous Shoaib Akhtar jettisoned, with youthful exuberance in the form of Aamer, Ajmal and Shahzaib, and with unfair outcome upon unfair outcome tripping us up, people couldn”t help but like us. But to all those people who avoided us like we were lepers, who didn”t want to tour us for personal reasons masked in the language of security, who scheduled us for bullshit tours as run-ups to main events, who brushed us aside and questioned our place in the international cricketing fraternity, who almost ensured that cricket died in Pakistan, I just have one question:

How do you like us now, bitches?

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