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.
