An unquiet smash

No doubt book had enough drama to draw on: where it succeeds, however, is the wonderful verve with which it is written

A whitewash. A disaster. The end of the line.

All of the above, the headlines would have us believe. Bangladesh yelled its name to the world last April, a cricketing side that had finally arrived. For the first-time ever, Pakistan had been walloped left and right across thee ODIs.

The Bangladesh skipper, starry-eyed, called it “a great moment” for Bangladesh cricket. His Pakistani counterpart, Azhar Ali, was good and gracious, “I’d like to congratulate Bangladesh … as everybody knows, the senior players have left. The youngsters have to stand up, and we have to pull our heads together.”

It was a statement: just because the team was green, didn’t mean they were yellow. But the navel-gazing had begun.

The usual suspects showed up, pointing to rock-bottom (if from too high a horse). “Losing to Bangladesh is the lowest point,” said Javed Miandad, before slyly taking a little credit, “I did a little bit of coaching in Bangladesh and told them some of the basics … and now their game is improving day by day.”

Meanwhile, the respected Shahryar Khan told us what we’d long-suspected, “None of our first class teams measure up to the minimum domestic standard of fitness,” he said. “…Our minimum level of fitness is only met by Misbah and Younus.”

We all considered that a second: the fittest gents, in one of the youngest sides, were 40-year-old Misbah and 37-year-old Younis — an age bracket associated with mid-life crisis. The ghost of Shoaib Akhtar, declaring not too long ago that his 70-year-old phupho was fitter than (the since-dropped) Nas Jamshed, echoed in our ears again. It’s been said enough: the tragedy of the Pakistan cricket watcher is the tragedy of the hard drug addict — there’re exhilarating highs, there’re uglier lows and, after a certain point, losing one’s sense of reality is all but assured.

But reading Osman Samiuddin’s The Unquiet Ones, one wonders whether we would want it any other way. Here, in all its teeth-gritting glory, is the definitive book on Pakistan cricket. And though it calls itself a history, it has the epic sweep of a novel: crazy, conflicted, and endlessly surprising.

From the outset, the book seems a service: a dewdrop in the desert that is Pakistan sports-writing. Of the little there is, it’s no surprise that much of the writing on Pakistan is un-Pakistani — in the hands of Western observers, the team comes off as an exotic mess; in Indian accounts, it fares more accurately (if to varying degrees: one prefers Mukul Kesavan’s wonderful prose to Shashi Tharoor’s agenda pieces). Which brings us to Mr Samiuddin’s biggest achievement: jazba. The Unquiet Ones is a work of passion, and like all passion, it is infectious: the love for the game — and the love for the characters that make it — is palpable on every page.

Covering 70 years, less talented writers would sink in their own research. But Mr Samiuddin shuns the 900-page anthology; his book wrestles with dreams, themes, and intuitions, flying back and forth. And since cricket makes up the country’s soul, The Unquiet Ones too becomes greater than the sum of its parts: a composite picture of Pakistan — cultural, social, economic — pieced together with press clippings, run rates, and tour diaries.

Though they pre-date the writer himself, time and attention is paid to the founding fathers. As with all other facets of the nation post-Partition, our cricketing supremos started from zero: from “the first monarch,” Captain Kardar, to the clear-eyed Justice Cornelius (in one unforgettable passage, the Chief Justice suggests bringing in big and broad six-footers from Mianwali and teaching them fast bowling).

Politics and pop culture never wander far from the picture: from the high drama of Messrs Bhutto and Sharif (both cricketers in their misspent youths), to the low comedy of the PCB. “Total Gawalmandi,” Senator Enver Baig mutters during a hilarious Senate committee grilling in 2009. For the author, the PCB is an unanswered question: “is it a public institution with the spirit of a private body, or is it a private enterprise carrying out a public service?”

Mr Samiuddin also comes down hard — rightly and necessarily — on a lifetime of neglect towards talent in Balochistan, linking it not only to the centre’s wider apathy but, most damningly, to a repeat performance via East Pakistan — and the train is pulling out.

Then there are character pieces, moody and multidimensional: Fazal Mahmood, we now know at least, is a blue-eyed heart-stealer, with a capricious heart of his own. Nur Khan is King Midas, an admin boss that turns to gold all he touches. Imran Khan is distilled will, a human dynamo that may or may not have made his Cornered Tiger speech that glorious day in 1992.

And in “The Quest for Izzat”, one of the book’s most beautiful chapters, we find the essence of Javed Miandad. In one anecdote, Miandad studiously mimics Aussie players carrying smart leather briefcases, packed with county contracts. Asks a teammate, “Javed, what are you doing with the briefcase? You don’t have any contract, or sponsorship!” Replies Miandad, “See here, I have a copy of the Quran in it. And doesn’t it look good?”

Mr Samiuddin is also at his best breaking down complex subjects — Wasim Akram et al — too often caricatured in the short-form press: the ebb and flow of Pakistani fast-bowling; Lahore vs. Karachi (and Lahore-Karachi vs. Everyone Else); the mysterious ways of the Inzamam locker room, and the Coming of Misbah, MBA.

Some sentences require engraving in glass: the Pakistan side “appears to live fullest when imagining its own imminent death”. Intikhab Alam is an “arch survivor so adept, not only would he survive a nuclear holocaust, he would also emerge as the bomb maker’s administrative director”. Yet it all ends in tears, with the heartbreak of the spot-fixing scandal. Talking about a British-Pakistani doctor he wished to marry, Muhammad Amir opens up in the book. “She had called him the previous night,” writes Mr Samiuddin, “and said she would give him an injection that would make him sleep for five years after which he could wake up and resume his career, still fresh.” If only.

No doubt the book had enough drama to draw on: where it succeeds, however, is the wonderful verve with which it is written. The Unquiet Ones is a love letter to what the book calls Pakistaniat.

The author did well not to try explaining the term.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th,  2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.