Mar 3 2014

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Pakistan clinched a spot in the Women’s world Twenty20 in Bangladesh next year after a nine-wicket victory over Ireland in the semi-final of the qualifiers in Dublin.

Ireland were bowled out for only 65 and Pakistan cruised to the win, losing only one wicket in the process.

Sadia Yousuf starred for Pakistan with figures of 4-9 in four overs while Kim Garth was the only one from Ireland who remained unbeaten and managed double figures.

Javeria Khan scored 34 as Pakistan wrapped up the chase easily, losing only Nahida Khan for 13 in the seventh over while Nain Abidi made 16.

Jul 30 2013

ICC World Cup 2015: Pakistan’s opener against india

Twenty-three years after Imran Khan led Pakistan to victory over England, Melbourne will again host the World Cup final in 2015, while Sydney and Auckland will hosts semi-finals just as they did in 1992.

A wide range of alternative options for the major matches of a tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand had been discussed in the lead-up to the formal announcement of the official fixtures in Melbourne on Tuesday, including the prospect of a semi or final at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium and even Adelaide Oval.

But the organisers ultimately retained the same formula as 1992, handing matches to the SCG and Eden Park before the event’s show-piece takes place on March 29 at the MCG, where a crowd of more than 87,000 had watched Imran’s team triumph.

Among other key fixtures, the previously earthquake-stricken Christchurch will host the tournament’s opening match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka on February 14 at Hagley Oval, while later that same day Australia will play England at the MCG. The cup holders India will commence their tournament by facing Pakistan in Adelaide the following day.

Having been drawn together in Pool A, Australia will travel to Auckland to meet New Zealand on February 28. Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Wellington will each host a quarter-final.

Many luminaries were on hand in Melbourne’s Docklands for the announcement, including the ICC chief executive Dave Richardson who kept wicket for South Africa at the 1992 event, alongside Dennis Lillee, Ian Chappell, Kapil Dev, Sanath Jayasuriya, Adam Gilchrist and Michael Hussey.

“The ICC Cricket World Cup is the flagship tournament of the 50-over game. The 2015 tournament will mark 40 years since the first World Cup in 1975 and that history of great contests and heroes helps make the tournament what it is – the most sought after prize in our increasingly global game,” Richardson said.

“The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 will be returning to Australia and New Zealand after 23 years and will be staged at the back of two outstanding 50-over ICC events – the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 and ICC Champions Trophy 2013. I’m absolutely confident that the success of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 will further strengthen the status of 50-over cricket as a successful and viable format alongside Tests and Twenty20 Internationals.”

Several tournament venues have undergone major redevelopments with 2015 in mind, not least the SCG with a projected capacity of 48,000, and Adelaide Oval’s expansion to accommodate 50,000. Eden Park has also undergone a considerable facelift to also be capable of hosting 50,000 spectators.

The tournament will feature 49 matches across 44 days in 14 cities throughout February and March of 2015. Australia’s 2014-15 Test summer has been shortened to a mere four matches against India in order to leave room for the cup’s lengthy schedule. A 14-team format has the competitors pitted in two groups of seven, each to play six pool matches before the top four in each group advance to the quarter-finals, semis and final.

Pool A: England, Australia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Qualifier 2 and Qualifier 3
Pool B: South Africa, India, Pakistan, West Indies Zimbabwe, Ireland and Qualifier 4

Venue cities: Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Christchurch, Dunedin, Napier, Nelson, Hamilton, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Jul 29 2013

Australia are now Pakistan

A generation of Pakistanis grew up fearing Australia. There was little admiration or ability to relate, just fear. Even more than Hansie Cronje’s South Africa, it was Steve Waugh’s team who became tormentors of Pakistan’s great champions. At Lord’s in 1999 they killed the idealism of a generation. Six months later, in Hobart, they prepared coffins for the most talented group of Pakistani cricketers there ever will be. These Australian teams saw the holes in Pakistan’s armour and bluster and drove a spear through them.

Pakistan failed to win a Test match against Australia for 15 years. Pakistan went to face an average Australian team in 2009-10 and came back winless. Pakistani players continued to call the Australians their role models, and continued to talk about them in revered tones even after the Aussies became vincible.

Imran Khan, the purveyor of all that is true, spent two decades telling us how everything in our system was wrong, and how the Australian way was perfect. For Pakistani fans, these Australians were an alien race brought to this world to torment our heroes while providing a different, more successful (if not aesthetically better) way of doing things. People you could follow and fear.

And now they are being embarrassed by England! Possibly a worse England team than the one Pakistan clean-swept 18 months ago. If all goes to plan, Pakistan will enter the “home” series against South Africa ranked fourth in the world. Leapfrogging Australia in the rankings would once have been cause for celebration; now there’s sympathy, for no one understands what the Aussies are going through better than Pakistan.

In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they are becoming Pakistan.

The bowling unit continues to keep the team in the game and puts its heart and body on the line every time, even as the batsmen fail to give them the slightest bit of solace. The sacking of a coach mere weeks before a major event added to the belief that the presence and knowhow of past greats would somehow make the current lot better.

Pointing fingers in every direction without understanding any of the problems. Finding a vision to follow (the Argus report) and then abandoning it as soon as there are problems. Decrying the state of the system as ill-equipped to produce Test cricketers. These are all more Pakistani than hating India.

Even the composition of Australia’s team has Pakistani aspects to it. They went through a few years (2007-11) when a decline in their bowling and their team overall was counteracted by a still formidable middle order – much like Pakistan had been under Bob Woolmer and Inzamam-ul-Haq. This was followed by the emergence of young quicks, but the retirement/removal of much of that formidable middle order (for Ponting and Hussey, read Inzi, Yousuf and Younis; the latter for 14 months). Of course, in Pakistan both the decline and the removals were a little extreme; but everything is extreme in Pakistan.

The current teams have their similarities too. Their captains are forced to play at No. 4, though they would prefer to play at No. 5, crippled by the burden of knowing that when they fall, the castle falls. Each has an allrounder who has spent years being an unfulfilled promise, and has only had success in the shorter formats, but continues to believe he is a Test opener despite all evidence to the contrary. Both have a bunch of young talented pacers and no one to guide them.

And then there’s Ashton Agar. We were told that Australia did not allow their seniors to retire in a bunch; there was only one retirement per season, that’s how a culture was bred and sustained. We were told that the Australians had an endless supply of top-quality batsmen that the Shield continued to produce. But more than everything else, we were told Australia would never throw in a young kid who wasn’t ready.

Australian cricketers made their debuts when their faces looked like a day-five Nagpur pitch (see: Haddin, Brad). They made their debuts only when they had earned it twice over. Now we have Agar: selected as a spinner, he has a record-breaking (and surprising) innings in his first outing and suddenly becomes the marketing man’s dream, despite the fact that he is not particularly good at his day job, yet. Now all we have to see is whether he pretends to be 25 a decade from now and we will know that he really is the second coming of Shahid Afridi.

Agar’s selection, a reward for promise than of achievement at lower levels, screamed of Pakistan more than a fast bowler being naughty.

Talking of that, Shoaib Akhtar was sent home for hitting Mohammad Asif with a bat; Warner threw a missed punch at an opposition player – that just shows how far Australia still are from emulating Pakistan.

And all of this matters. We know that Australia won’t be ordinary for long. That’s one of cricket’s truths. Since Warwick Armstrong popularised what has become the stereotype of Australia beyond its borders, Australia have never been a bad team for a sustained period. They will recover from this; I’m sure they’ll find a way.

So the attention must shift to the Pakistan board and the West Indies board, and to a lesser extent to Sri Lanka Cricket – boards that have allowed their teams to embrace a culture of mediocrity and be satisfied with it. The question is, are these boards watching, taking notes, learning? For when the Australians rise from the ashes, these boards could do worse than mimic them, allow their teams and systems to become imitation phoenixes, and actually succeed in their jobs, for once. Or is that too much to ask for?

Jul 9 2013

Wasim bowled

Legendary Pakistan paceman Wasim Akram said Monday he will marry his Australian girlfriend, who has converted to Islam and will settle in his home country.

Australian media reported that Wasim proposed on bended knee to Shaniera Thompson in her living room.

“Yes, I will marry next year and I’ve known Shaniera for the last one-and-a-half years and she has converted to Islam,” Wasim told AFP by telephone from England.

“I feel lucky that I have got a second chance in life.”

The 47-year-old’s first wife Huma died in 2009.

Wasim said Thompson, a former public relations consultant, will settle in Pakistan.

“She is close to my kids who are also excited and my in-laws (Huma’s parents) also endorsed the decision after meeting her,” said Wasim, who has two sons from his previous marriage.

“It will be a new life, a new beginning and I hope that we will settle down well with the best wishes of family and fans,” he said.

Wasim played 104 Tests and 356 one-day internationals for Pakistan in a career lasting from 1984 to 2003.

He was regarded as one of the best left-arm fast bowlers to have played the game and remains a major celebrity in Pakistan.

Wasim was player of the tournament in the country’s only triumph in the World Cup, in Australia in 1992. He captained Pakistan to a runners-up finish in the 1999 World Cup in England.

Jul 2 2013

Left in their tracks

Pakistan ka matlab kya? “laa ilaaha illAllah”, Hindustan ka matlab kya? “bhaar mein jaaye, humko kyaa” (What is the meaning of Pakistan? “There is no god but God”, what is the meaning of India? “It can go to hell, what is it to us”). People chanted this slogan all day long at the National Stadium, Karachi on a sunny winter afternoon in 1989. Back then, it was too naïve to understand the deeper meaning of the words we uttered, and perhaps too youthful to assess the people who stood around me to foresee the long-term socio-economic impact of it in Pakistan.

Military dictator, Ziaul Haq’s C-130 had crashed a year earlier and democracy had returned to Pakistan. The Soviet Union had already started disintegrating and the mujahideen fighters had prevented the Russians from marching towards the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. A new page in Pakistan’s history was being turned and the future seemed bright.

Wasim Akram was my poster-boy hero, Javed Miandad’s six against India was the best shot ever hit and Imran Khan was not just the greatest captain or all-rounder but also the most eligible bachelor in the world. The best Indian fast bowler was Kapil Dev but he could not bowl fast, plus they did not have a spinner with the skill and guile of Abdul Qadir. Sunil Gavaskar, Kris Srikkanth and Ravi Shastri were good cricketers but we took them as our sworn enemies.

There was not a single Indian cricketer I liked, other than one, Mohammad Azharuddin. He was stylish, had great wrists and was a ‘brother’; in some sort of strange way it made me proud when he was made captain. Azharuddin was likable; the rest, anything but.

The country we had partitioned from was very similar to ours but we were a more flamboyant nation, drove fancier cars and most importantly, usually won against them in a game of cricket. Thank God, I was Pakistani and not an Indian.

In Pakistan, your hate for India was a barometer of your love for Pakistan and everyone was a ‘patriot’.

Pakistan had a prosperous open economy in the first half of its existence, enjoying the perks of the Ricardian theory of absolute and comparative advantage. India on the other hand chose a different route; it decided to strengthen its domestic production and infrastructure. The inward looking restrictive form of self-reliance and socialistic policies had isolated it from world trade benefits. This eventually resulted in deep economic crisis, inflation had roared to 17 per cent and the fiscal deficit had become unsustainable.

In July 1991, India was forced to take drastic measures that changed the fabric of their economic structure and the destiny of its people. India slowly but surely opened the gate to international trade and was now ready to take on the world.

The first wave of Afghani refugees came to Pakistan in the 80’s, during the Soviet War when the Taliban were created and Pakistan had taken an extremely stringent form of Islam to its parliamentary affairs. India, on the other hand had a closed economy until the 90’s, when a new, more expansive policy was embraced. Fundamental restructuring of an economy or a society has a time lag; it can take over two decades before its true ramifications come to light.

The Taliban, secular intolerance and heroin are one of Pakistan’s biggest problems today, rated as the most dangerous place in the world by Newsweek and The Economist. Meanwhile, India has a GDP of $1.8 trillion with foreign trade of over $800 billion, making it the ninth largest economy in the world. As you sow, so shall you reap.

There are some things money can’t buy, but there are a lot of things it can: a Formula One team that is worth $200 million, Dale Steyn, who was auctioned for $1.2 million for a month’s work in the IPL, or a V600 Slazenger that costs $150. It can also ‘buy’ the exposure that Shikhar Dahwan gets when batting with his captain Kumar Sangakara, the opportunity to face Shaun Tait, advice from the great Waqar Younis. This is all invaluable, but in paradox, it comes at a price, just like a cricket bat.

The catastrophe stemming from Pakistan’s socio-economic turmoil is unquantifiable and sport is just one of its casualties. Hockey and squash have suffered most but cricket too has fallen victim – not a single international match has been played in Pakistan for over four years. Though the worst is maybe yet to come, it’s a scary thought.

It is not the lack of talent in Pakistan that is worrying; it is the lack of confidence and belief of a nation that is running low on self-esteem. Indians, however, seldom waiver in their fortitude, and their resolve is now borderline brash. At least, that’s what it may appear to their opponents. They have started feeling pride in expressing their identity due to the overall success of their country while Pakistanis have become increasingly hesitant because of the backlash they often encounter, retreating into their shell.

Mar 11 2013

Breakthrough moment for Pakistan women’s cricket

For Sana Mir, the captain of the Pakistan women’s cricket team, the successful and peaceful completion of a national Twenty20 event this week was a giant step forward for women’s sports in the country.

The six-team tournament, named after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was held at the Pakistan Cricket Board headquarters at the Gaddafi stadium under a heavy security blanket and concluded on Thursday night in a colourful finale.

In a first for women’s sports in Pakistan, men were allowed inside the stadium to watch the matches which have been out of bounds for them in the past – except for those who came with families.

Pakistan’s society, which has been divided by a continuing war against militants, has left women’s sports battling to be taken seriously or even properly funded.

In 2005 a marathon race in Lahore that included women was attacked by extremists and had to be called off.

But there were no such problems this week.

“The girls who came from all over the country really enjoyed themselves,” .

“Besides the cricket, it was a chance to mingle and interact with each other and this has really raised their confidence.”

Mir, who has been playing for Pakistan for the last seven years and has led the side in many international events, said girls still face difficulties playing the sport they love because of the conservative outlook towards women in sports in the country.

The final, won by Sana’s domestic team ZTBL, turned out to be an occasion for the players and their friends and families to celebrate and enjoy themselves as some of them even danced to the beats of popular local hits by singers at a concert after the match.

“I am really happy to see these girls enjoying and expressing themselves. It has been a long journey for women’s cricket in Pakistan,” said Shamsha Hashmi, a former Pakistan captain who has headed the Pakistan Cricket Board’s women’s wing.

It was also the first time a women’s cricket tournament was covered live on television in Pakistan.

Shamsha said this showed that women’s cricket had progressed a lot since her days of playing.

“This tournament has shown women’s cricket is not just a pastime for the girls and we have a good standard.

“Some exciting new players have come up and there are more and more girls now playing cricket even from remote areas,” she said.

The final word came from pacer Diana Baig, who hails from the remote Gilgit area in northern Pakistan which has been hit by sectarian strife in recent times.

“I have always wanted to play a productive role in society and for me cricket has been the best way to express myself,” Baig said.