Well done, Pakistan!

Fans of Pakistan cricket may need to be given a collective prescription for heart medicine. For as long as our team is on the pitch, we can never rest easy. For three and a half days of the second Test match against England in Abu Dhabi we were outclassed by a team that is relentless, packed with great players and high on confidence. Then in two glorious hours our spinners Abdur Rehman and Saeed Ajmal turned it out, bowling England out for 72 and taking us to a victory that is improbable even by the scarcely believable standards Pakistan cricket has set for last-gasp wins. Supporting the Pakistan cricket team can be a thankless task, with inexplicable defeats, nasty in-fighting, match fixing and assorted other dramas driving us to fury. But ultimately it is all worth it for moments like these.

Here’s something to keep in mind. Pakistan’s two best bowlers, indeed possibly the two best bowlers in the world at present, were not on the pitch because they were serving out a jail sentence. We were up against the number one ranked Test team in the world and somehow outwitted them in the most glorious way possible. Their captain is a veteran of over 10 years; ours is mocked by his own countrymen just because we aren’t sufficiently entertained by him. We may be unreasonably demanding fans but Misbah-ul-Haq now deserves to be elevated to the pantheon of great Pakistani captains. It was his batting, derided as boring, that kept us in the game in the first innings and it is his imposition of his personality on the team that has made us such a consistently winning team. It is time to bury the hatchet and embrace Misbah.

Beating England always has an added edge, not just because of our colonised past, but because of the bitterness that has always accompanied series between the two countries. This series, thankfully, has been played in good spirit and without incident. No accusations of ball tampering, match fixing and shoddy umpiring can take away from our dominance of England. This was a special win for us, more so because of the tribulations of the last year. Pakistan cricket is back and the international cricketing scene has become a lot more interesting because of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2012.