Test cricket in Pakistan is an education after 24 years

 

 Denizens of the bleachers,

It was most gracious & charitable of the Pakistan Cricket Board to admit that the pitch in Rawalpindi had been doctored, given the insurmountable evidence that it was. We've all seen the figures, chaps. Record breaking nod-offery. The Stats Guru was idly flipping the balls on the abacus back and forth when he discovered that there has been no match in Test cricket history, until now, in which century opening partnerships have kicked off the first, second, and third innings of a match. Never mind that they never got close to a 4th inns. Smiffy was also being most charitable when he described the pitch as "dead", when the Ghost of Tony Abbot could have easily been invoked with "dead, buried and cremated". The road to end all roads, akin to a narrow strip of badly graded dust across the Nullabor Plain. Some wag in the stands dubbed it "the worst pitch this century, anywhere". Usman "The Token Muzzie" Khawaja was on the verge of becoming a national hero again (home & away) in the only real highlight of a slumberful match after spending his entire career being so shabbily treated by the selectors, when he got out for 97 with a silly reverse sweep - of all the stoopid shots - that he would have missed any other day. [The Main Man then tonked a big ton at "home" in the next in atonement to silence his critics who said he couldn't play overseas, and only likes it when it's an easy pace coming on. At 35 years of age, the Kid can play, an average of 165.33 this tour says so. Not that there was any shadow of a doubt to begin with, for Chrissake, but he still had to be twice as good as anyone else to make the team in his 11th season, just because he's 'foreign.'] Ironic that as the pipe-opening stanza was being played, a fairly powerful bomb went off  'just up the road' - a suicide dude is hoist by his own petard in Peshawar, blowing up some Shia'a mosque and taking 56 with him to the Gates of Heaven in some tit-for-tat sectarian violence. No worries, you'd have to think the Strayan team bus would've had a few big burly ugly mercenaries toting Kalashnikov's riding shot gun. Tongans, preferably.

As the yawnfest was being played out in the heavy smog of nearby Islamabad, it did get to remind me of the one and only time a sitting US President has witnessed a day of test cricket - Gen. Dwight D.Eisenhower, because of its interminable dullness. There's been plenty of time to leaf through the old record books to while away the time. Poor Ike. For some bizarre reason he happened to find himself in Karachi on 8th December in 1959 on a whirl-wind Asian tour to be gonged with the nation's highest honor and get the huge Star of Pakistan pinned to his already dazzlingly bemedalled chest and was invited to the cricket, as it was unquestionably going to be the best show in town that day. It just so happened to be the fourth day of the third and final test between Pakistan and Australia. The locals dawdled interminably for 104 runs in the full days play for the loss of five wickets with Hanif carrying his bat all day. You guessed it, it wasn't the slowest day of cricket in Test match history, but got close. That happened three years earlier in the first and one off test between Pakistan and Straya in '56, when 95 runs were tonked in a full days play for 12 wkts on coir matting, also in Karachi. It remains the slowest day ever. So, they've got serious form here on giving pitches the medical treatment, going back a long way. It's not known if Mr. President spent the whole day at the cricket, but why not if he had an important round of meetings to hold - everybody who was anyone would've been there. All reports suggest Ike liked the baseball (went to 13 days of MLB matches as President), lemonade and smoked like a two bob watch; you'd reckon he would've been right at home on the local cheroots with few clues as to what was going on. So, there's that.  

Running down a draw for more than a day in the Karachi heat this time round - again breaking all sorts of records down those dusty laneways - Pakistan certainly know how to play on deceased wickets, where the bowlers fail to extract any bounce from the lifeless pitch; even Warnie wouldn't have been make her move. As the pancake and six feet under.  Set 500 to win with all the time in the world and the run rate drops to row after row of maidens and the Pak's bat out a million overs to keep the Benood-Qadir Trophy at 0-0, but only with skipper Babar doing the business. Not taking any chances of getting beaten here, with a match to play, no way José. Just hang on grimly to the bitter end. 3/251 at the finish of the first day with The Usman batting large again set the stage of a watch the ball and bat all day kind of match. All day, every day. It's a labour of love for the bowlers, and don't they know it.

There was no word as to whether His Highness The Legendary Lord Imran Khan Prime Minister of Pakistan made it to the members at Lahore - probs a bit too much other stuff going on at the time; internal factional politics imploding, the Taliban at yr doorstep, bombs going off, war in Europe, you know, that sort of thing. The irony is that with the cricket on the line, the 'Lion of Lahore' found himself in all sorts of deep doggy-do after jailing some riff-raff political opponents - as you do - most of whom have been bailed but remain unhappy about it, he rigged it to narrowly avoid a no confidence motion in the Pakistan parliament, and called for fresh elections anyway saying he's quashed a plot by foreign agitators.  Which still puts him in a rather difficult position, as the way he sees it is the United States "wants me, personally, gone". Poor Imran; he had his heart set on it, with good intentions, but there was always a school of thought on whether it was a wise career move. In that part of the world, that sort of shit always tends to end in tears, especially for a cricket hero. He should have been knighted for his exploits with them mighty quick right arm fast balls on all sorts of decks all over the cricketing world, and left it at that, but that's in "beautiful hindsight", in the now immortal words of the NSW Deputy Commissioner of the State Emergency Service (after he'd earlier told everybody who might have been waiting for a boat that they'd be well advised to "get as high as you possibly can" in the interim). So, there's that. 

But it was a ripe final day in Lahore, to pick up the newly minted trophe 1-0 at the very last gasp, just when you thought that "sporting declarations" in pursuit of risky victory had fallen right out of favour. It's very hard to question Cummins admittance to cricket's Pantheon now - one of the modern greats, and he's had an absolute saloon passage as skipper, like fruit for the sideboard after a stellar career. My Spy at the Ground, who had supa-glued his eyes to a late-night pay-per-view cathode ray tube, remarked that on the last day of the last test, the GOAT showed why he is just that. No argument will be brooked. Never mind that Smiffy and Burbs will soon be looking for other work at their age after glittering, but forever tarnished, careers, let's face it, everybody is getting on; half the team's on the wrong side of 30. For the moment, winners are grinners and losers can suit themselves, but spare a thought for poor ol' Swepso under the circumstances, copping a right education getting picked for his first game in a joint no-one had even seen for 24 years. A bowling average of 133.00 for a 28-year-old leggie on debut tells you that's a very long time.

All power to their oars. Took 'em 15 days down that highway, but they eventually found what they were looking for.