Being "twenty-een": March 2011

These are my thoughts on Pakistan going out of the semi-final. Many people will have many views. These are mine.

At the very beginning of the tournament, if you had told me that Pakistan would lose in the semi-final, I would have gladly taken that. By no stretch of logic or imagination were we among the tournament favorites. The bowling soul had been ripped out of our team. Any team that loses two bowlers of the class of Asif and Amir would struggle. The debate of their innocence is for another time. Just the fact that they were not able to play is being considered and that was a huge blow for Pakistan. In their absence we had an aging and crocked Shoaib Akhtar and a reluctant (to ball a new ball) Umar Gul. Other than that we had Wahab Riaz who despite his performance against India would not have made the team had either Amir or Asif been available.

We had good spinners in Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Ajmal and Abdul Rehman. Even Hafeez bowled well throughout. Our bowling was good but could have been awesome instead. Anyways the batting is where it all went wrong. I heard some commentator say this about Hafeez

“He is the most accomplished and classy 30 making batsmen I have ever seen.”

And that just sums up Mohammad Hafeez. I don’t know if its brain freeze or any other psychological problem but once past 30, he just loses the plot. The shot that he played today to get out was just atrocious. The fact that it was the widest ball Munaf Patel bowled in his whole spell, and Hafeez was trying to paddle/dabble/whatever sweep it is just astounding. Moving on, for five matches we tried Ahmad Shehzad and I have no problem with that. I have always felt that Pakistani selectors don’t give enough chances to batsmen. To cut a long story short he never really looked like doing something. He might become a wonderful batsman one day and maybe the world cup came too early for him but I doubt he would ever have the ability or class of say a Saeed Anwar. In all the years I have watched cricket, Saeed Anwar is the only decent opener I have seen. I am told there were some good ones before him but back then I was kicking it with “you know who” in the heavens.

But I digress; the fact of the matter is we do not possess a world class opener, hell if I am being honest we do not possess a world class batsman in our line up. Before you start baying for my blood please read further. Let’s go back to the openers. We promoted Kamran Akmal and let’s just say he was Ok because I am going to annihilate him later on when I discuss his keeping. One of the bright spots of the tournament has been the discovery of Asad Shafiq. There have been suggestions that we should use him as an opener. I have no opinion on that. That is something for the coaches to decide. I would say this much however that our first preference should be to search for a new opener who has played there his whole life rather than trying to fit players in there ala Kamran Akmal or Asad Shafique.

Let us now move on to the middle order. I am of the opinion that Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq are good batsmen but they are not and will never be world class batsmen. They just do not possess the class or the range of strokes of a Ricky Ponting or an Inzimam-ul-Haq if you want a local example. We needed Younis Khan until we discovered Asad Shafiq but now he must be politely told to either stick to Test cricket or retire altogether. There is the argument that we need stability in the middle order but I might bash your head in if this is the kind of stability that is on offer. To those who are too thick. The stability on offer from Younis Khan is of the kind where you block 20 odd balls and then get out just when it was looking like you were settled.

And now ladies and gentlemen we turn our attention to Misbah-ul-Haq. To say that he lost us the semi-final single handedly would perhaps be too harsh but make no mistake about it he had a huge part to play in it. I don’t care if he scored 56 of 76 in the end or if it is said that his job was always to hold the innings together. At number five, as a specialist batsman you have got to do better. He brought so much pressure on the batsman on the other end that it was impossible to play with him. At least thrice I saw him turn down fairly obvious singles. Keep in mind I am talking about the start of his innings and not the end when he had Saeed Ajmal for company. Anyways he has been a good servant for Pakistan but again he is not a world class player. He just does not have the ability you would expect a number 5 to have. I don’t want to give examples again. You all get the point.

Then we have Umar Akmal. He has plenty of talent and all the qualities required to become a world class player but he is not yet there. Talent and the realization of it are two different matters. I have however a huge problem with him with regards to his behavior whenever Kamran Akmal is threatened to be dropped. Someone needs to sit him down and set his mind very straight and clear about this. He does not play for his elder brother, he plays for Pakistan and if Pakistan is going to achieve something Kamran is not going to be playing. Please wait a little longer for my Kamran Akmal rant.

Moving on to Razzaq and Afridi, now that the tournament is finished (for Pakistan) can someone explain to me why he was in the team? Yes he scored a half century and took some important wickets but it was very clear that Pakistan didn’t really need him. If we had played a specialist batsman in his place, we might have got more runs; a specialist bowler and more wickets. I almost felt sorry for him every time I saw him chasing after a ball; the fact that he was too old for all this was oozing out of every plod. Shahid Afridi clearly didn’t trust him with the bowl as amply demonstrated throughout the tournament and overly highlighted by the fact that a completely out of sorts Umar Gul was given the bowl when Razzaq had 8 overs left. The less said about the batting the better. I agree with Imran Khan here, cricket is a game of specialists. “Reloo-kattas” should be left for street cricket. It would be wonderful if we could produce an Imran Khan or a Wasim Akram again but until then let’s just stick to specialists. Afridi we can all now agree is a bowling all-rounder. He has talent in abundance as a batsman but no temperament and no technique. Someone in the post-match commentary summed him up as well.

“He wants to hit the ball too far and too hard”

If only he could play shots like the one he played against Yuvraj when he first came to the crease; a glorious and well-timed drive through the off side. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, he has been a wonderful bowler throughout the tournament and deserves his place in the team and had Misbah or Younis or Kamran Akmal caught Tendulkar of his bowling, maybe he could have taken us to the final as well but I guess it was not meant to be.

And that is the end of our batting. I do not see match winners in there, maybe you do. If I was in charge (speaking of wishes) I would have two proper openers, Hafeez might still be in contention because of his bowling and tendency of making 30’s, Asad Shafiq at one down and Umar Akmal at 2 down. Umar Akmal must be allowed greater time on the crease. Imagine what difference he might have made if he had come in place of Younis Khan and not when Pakistan needed more than run a ball to win the match in this semi-final. And then we must look for two young batsmen that we can groom for 5 and 6. We must either find a proper all-rounder or decide on match to match bases of playing a specialist bowler or batsman in place of Razzaq.

There is not much to say about Pakistan’s fielding. We just don’t learn. There are signs of improvement and with all three of the semi-final culprits on my hit list, I have hope. Kamran Akmal is and will NEVER be a keeper. He just doesn’t have the reflexes. There is no point in justifying it, we MUST search for a new keeper no matter how much he improves because a natural will always be a natural. And a smart/outrageous catch can often be the difference between winning and losing a match. There is this thing called anticipation. I saw in the match that whenever Misbah shuffled across the stumps to dab the ball to leg side for a single, Dhoni was half way there as soon as Misbah played the shot and this happened many times. It’s called ANTICIPATION. It is IMPORTANT for a keeper.

This brings me near the end of my rant/thoughts. So given what I have just dissected in front of you a respectable semi-final appearance is more than what we could have hoped for but having gotten so far, I believe we could have done better than what we did. If we had taken our catches and if Umar Gul had not decided to have a howler I might have been sitting here writing a different article or no article at all.

I am proud of what we have achieved given the circumstances but I am sad because true greatness was just within reach and we let it slip through our fingers. It is not a time to rejoice but it is certainly not a time for doom and gloom either. We must accept the fact that we were just not good enough. We must learn from our mistakes and move on. Pakistani cricket doesn’t have a history of doing that but maybe . . . just maybe this time would be different . . .

Being "twenty-een"

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Pakistan vs India Semi-Final (2011) - My thoughts

Friday, March 4, 2011

Revolving Doors

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