Outside The Line

We Love To Say I Told You So

It's not often that Outside the Line can claim prescience in any way, so we might as well bask in the rare glory. As predicted in this space less than four months ago, Geoff Lawson did not make it to the end of the year as coach of Pakistan.  

Any odds on their next coach lasting longer than their next prime minister? Pakistan -- the gift that really just keeps on giving. Let the War Nerd tell you about it:

Pakistan is one of those places that won’t sit still long enough to write up. When that neocon professor said history was finished, they should have made him do a year as visiting professor at Karachi U. That would’ve sobered him up fast. History never gets done in Pakistan.

The whole country’s a disaster. One of those classic British-made disasters. One thing I’m learning in this business is the Brits messed up more places on this planet than anybody realizes, and somehow they got away with it. That’s what really amazes me about them, the way they got away with it. They realized after WW II that their power was terminally broke, and decided to quit India before Gandhi took it away from them—because if you’ve got any pride at all, losing to a little half-naked vegetarian who looks like the old “Keep on truckin’” cartoon is just not an acceptable outcome. But the Brits wanted to be sure they had two states to play with, not just a single united India. That was old colonial policy for them, and it worked time after time: set up two tribes that hate each other next to each other and let the games begin. (They almost managed to do that [to the US] in 1863—if Gettysburg had gone the other way, I hate to think where we’d be now.)

Now if only Greg Chappell can somehow get position, I would die a happy man.

The Paradox Of Pakistan Coaching

                                 

In another worthy addition to the Well, duh... Hall of Fame -- you can place it right between "Vladimir Putin having a say in Russian politics even after his 'retirement'" and "Miley Cyrus getting a DUI on Sunset Strip sometime in the 2010s"  -- it seems Geoff Lawson is not the saviour Pakistan cricket has been looking for all this time. (Wow, really, you don't say! Who would've thunk it, huh?)

I'm not sure if Pakistan will lose their game against India and bomb straight out of the Asia Cup. They might eke out a win and get eliminated tomorrow by Sri Lanka. Either way, I'm making the least bold prediction in history and will say that Lawson will not make it through 2008 as coach of Pakistan.

Let's face it, the guy was simply out of his league from the very start. I'm sure he's a nice enough dude, probably a hard worker, but this job is for the big boys. (Hell, the last guy who tried didn't even make it out alive!)

Thanks for coming though, Henry... it was cute for a while. You can go back to commentating Pura Cup matches for ABC radio now. That's more your thing, really.

(The fact that he even tried in the first place was the most shocking thing here. Coaching Pakistan? Why would anyone want to subject themselves to that ordeal? Don't they read the papers? What makes them think they can change anything? I guess the ego can do funny things to people's perception.)

It does bring up a weird incongruity of sorts... and probably the reason why that team is destined to continue in the vicious cycle for years to come. Let's call it The Paradox of Pakistan Coaching:

Anyone who thinks they can change the poisoned culture of Pakistan cricket through their mere presence as coach is probably severely deluded and egomaniacal.

And yet...

Being deluded and egomaniacal makes you the least qualified candidate to coach the Pakistan cricket team in the first place.

How can anyone possibly get out of that logical circle?

Sometimes Life Just Gives You Lemonade

Doesn't it seem like this headline was written just for Outside the Line?

Not Even Worthy Of The Wolf Touch

                                                    

I’ve mentioned before how much of a fan I am of those mysterious, 3-man appeal courts that prop up in Pakistan every once a while, whenever they need to quietly clean up any problems the players or the board may have caused. They’re like The Wolf -- in the business of solving problems. They come to your assistance whenever you need to “disappear” an issue.

Well, they’re back now, but I’m not sure anyone knows what for exactly. It’s to deal with Shoaib Akthar, naturally, I just have no idea anymore what the problem is they're trying to disappear. Is it about Shoaib getting paid a lot of money by some Indian magnate to either sit on the bench, or get injured in his 3^rd over of play? What the hell do the PCB care? If Billy Madison’s dad wants to waste money on Shoaib, that’s his own problem. Let him knock himself out. What's the issue?
 

Why Doesn't This Suprise Me?

From cricinfo's Ask Steven column:

Who once bowled a 17-ball over in an ODI? asked Dave Burton from Reading

The unlucky bowler who sent down the longest known over in international cricket was Mohammad Sami of Pakistan, with the third over of the Asia Cup match against Bangladesh in Colombo in 2004. It included four no-balls and seven wides, and the sequence of the over was: wd-4-2-nb-wd-nb1-0-wd-wd-0-wd-nb-wd-wd-nb-0-4. Ironically, Sami's previous over had been a wicket maiden, so he came off with the bizarre figures of 2-1-22-1.

Mr. >50 never disappoints, does he?

That Which You Do Not Know, You Cannot Account For

As usual, a few paragraphs of rumours and speculations about the Pakistan team gives you more to work with than a thousand official press releases from any other nation. It appears that the Pakistan board are starting to have second thoughts about the Malik captaincy, especially after Younis Khan reversed his earlier decision and announced that he'd be interested in the position again. For once, I think I have some sympathy for the PCB: Oh NOW you're interested, Younis. Thanks for that, bud. Great timing. We just gave away the position for another year to some guy who constantly looks like he's trying to pass a kidney stone and who can barely make the team as a batsman. Perfect.

This is going to get ugly. There are already rifts growing within the squad regarding selection policies, and from the basis of the article, I say I'd have to side with Younis' choices. He wanted to have Shahid Afridi in the Test squad; Malik didn't. He wanted to kick out Mohammad Sami after the first Test; Malik didn't. In my book, that's Younis 2, Malik 0.

Then again, maybe it's not Malik who is at fault here, and he's just the one being left out in the open to dodge the media's barbs. Maybe it all goes back to my original point about selectors, and why we might be better off without them. If the issue with a team has to do with player selection, maybe the ones at fault are those who are paid to select players (i.e. the selectors). But how can they be held accountable if no one even knows who the hell they are? Quickly, who's in the Pakistan selection committee? Any ideas? Okay, forget about the whole bunch -- who's the chairman of selectors, at least? Huh? Anyone?

Entering Khaled Mahmud Territory

Sample of active players whose Test bowling average is lower than Mohammad Sami's:

Ricky Ponting
Michael Clarke
Sourav Ganguly
Chris Gayle
Ramnaresh Sarwan
Tillakaratne Dilshan
Tatenda Taibu
Craig McMillan

'Nuff said.

(HT: Kelly Dwyer)

Like A Paranoid Dr. Richard Kimble

Imran Khan is now releasing videos and sending emails to the media from hiding, hurling blame in all directions at once. President Musharraf has "unleashed brutality that has not been known in this country before;" the Americans are "complicit or at the very least knew about this before it took place;" Benazir Bhutto is "on board with (Musharraf)."

I'm amased he hasn't added Shoaib Akthar to the list... he's already been blamed for everything else that's gone wrong in Pakistan.

Just Another Day For Pakistan Cricket

It seems Imran Khan is now on the run from Pakistani authorities. The strangest part I found in the story comes from ex-wife Jemima's statement to the Daily Mail:

The police ransacked his house and roughed up his family. He managed to escape just before they returned with an arrest warrant to cart him off to Kot Lakpat jail.

So the police actually bothered getting an arrest warrant? I thought the entire point of martial law was to avoid time-wasting bureaucratic technicalities like that.

Iceberg, Schmiceberg, When's Tea?

Q: Which world leader came to power controversially earlier this decade, has waged a divisive war against radical Islamism following the attacks on 9/11, recently discarded parts of his country's constitution in an effort to consolidate power, and was once served tea and a Twinkie by Daily Show host Jon Stewart?

If your answer was "George W. Bush," you're unfortunately wrong. (Bush would never have the balls to visit the Daily Show.) The correct answer is "General Pervez Musharraf," the world's Camouflaged Strongman du jour, who declared a state of emergency throughout Pakistan on Saturday night. Musharraf sent the military into the streets, fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and detained most of the main opposition leaders in the country (Imran Khan was put under house arrest).

But don't worry, everyone, the cricket's fine. Nasim Ashraf, head of the Pakistan Cricket Board, assures us that nothing will affect the most recent excuse to make a shitload of money by milking a rivalry that is quickly starting to lose all meaning and becoming nothing more than a disposable marketing brand upcoming series between India and Pakistan.

Why do I get the feeling sometimes that if cricket had been played on the deck of the Titanic, not one of those playing at the time would have survived? Too busy at the crease to board a lifeboat, or something.  We're a weird bunch, we cricket freaks... we seriously are.

In Case Mark Burnett Is Reading

I have to say, I love it every time we get to see 'Banana Republic moments' in international cricket -- those sporadic displays of brazen corruption, nepotism, and kangaroo court morals that are still used by administrative boards around the world to solve so many of their problems.

This past week we got to see not one, but two great instances of this: First, the Sri Lankan sports minister singlehandedly gets Marvan Atapattu reinstated in the Sri Lankan squad to tour Australia. Atapattu was initially overlooked for the series, but since he must have known someone who knew someone who was a nephew of someone else whose dad was about to do business with the minister, now he's back.

Then, on Friday, Shoaib Akthar served out the final game of his 13-match ban for bitch-slappin' Mohammad Asif around in the locker room before the Twenty20 World Cup last month. That Akthar sentence was a classic of the Bananas genre, and I personally loved it for a number of reasons:

1. Regardless of what anyone says, any series becomes more exciting if Shoaib Akthar is somehow involved.
   
   
2. The way the disciplinary committee made the majority of his punishment retroactive, including all the games of the World Cup and the two Tests against South Africa, so that in the end he only had to really miss four games. They made it seem as if he was being credited for 'time served,' as if that time comprised tossing salad in a holding cell every day during the deliberating period, rather that partying with Bollywood babes in his mansion, while watching the games on a big screen TV right above the pool.
   
   
3. The sheer balls (and I'm talking, Officer-Coon-with-a-wheelbarrow-sized cojones here) it took to base the length and severity of the sentence on the exact timing of Pakistan's upcoming series. Not only did they bring Shoaib back in time for the India series, they also made him available for the last game against South Africa, just in case it happened to be a tiebreaker.
   
   
4. The Pakistan Cricket Board's odd 3-man committees are back in my life, and I couldn't be happier.

I can't get enough of the PCB. I think someone should start a reality show based on their powers: every week they get to convene one of those mysterious 3-man panels (the PCB always goes for those... who has 3 judges when they could easily have 7 or 9?) which would then come in to the lives of average people and help them to 'disappear' their problems. Got a drug charge you'd like get rid of ahead of an important series? Don't worry, the panel will overturn it on appeal, 2-to-1, just in time for you to get on that plane. Parking ticket? The panel will dismiss it, 2-to-1, citing extenuating circumstances. Zoning restriction in your way? The panel approves your special permit, 2-to-1, due to a clerical error in the original legislation. It never fails, really.

Where Is The Stalin Of Pakistan Cricket?

Enough is enough. A few days ago, my friend J-Paul sent me this email, and after hearing about Pakistan's latest game, I figure there is not better time to share it:

Yo, so is Nazir the worst -- of the 8 main  international teams -- one day batter going round? The guy has played 71 innings and has an average of 25. Take out Zimbabwe (his only 2 hundreds), and the tool averages a mere 22. This is a specialist opening batsman here. The sooner they purge themselves of the likes of his scum, the better. How 'bout Younis Khan opening with Razzaq? Shit, can't be any worse than Nazir and Hafeez. Oh yeah, I forgot, Younis isn't an 'opener', whatever the fuck that means in this day and age...

After Imran Nazir's 2 against South Africa today, I realise that not only do I agree with the sentiment, I think it doesn't go far enough. I'm starting to wonder whether Nazir could even make it into the Zimbabwe team. He now has an average of 24.95 from 72 innings. The current Zimbabwean openers, Brendan Taylor and Vusi Sibanda, have averages of 28.43 and 23.88, respectively. (Which, remember, understate their talents somewhat, since neither of them have ever had the chance to, well, 'play Zimbabwe' and inflate their records.)

I don't exactly know why Pakistan have such an obsession with shielding their talent from the new ball.
They have done so ever since Saeed Anwar became a hermit a few years ago, and they were left with an ensemble cast of young, undersized wafters to rotate at the top, with varying thicknesses of monobrow and equally unfulfilled potential. And so it became that Taufeeq Umar begat Imran Farhat, who then begat Imran Nazir, who begat Salman Butt, who begat Mohammad Hafeez, who begat Kamran Akmal, and so on.

I understand the idea of trying to protect your match-winning players from the dangers of the new ball, but what good does it do to always have your worst batters leading the way? Sure, I probably wouldn't risk opening with Younis and Yusuf if I was in charge. But what's wrong with having Younis opening, Shoaib Malik coming in at 3, and then Yusuf at 5? Add some padding in between those (a Yasir Hameed here, a Misbah-ul-Haq there, an Afridi floating around), and you've got yourself a batting order. And you'll stop wasting our time with B-list poseurs like Imran Nazir.

Plagal Perhaps?

Not quite what I asked for, but still strangely fitting: Inzamam stumped second ball for 3, a further 3 runs away from Javedgemitefor Miandad's Pakistan record. Some might see it as a missed opportunity and an anti-climax – I say his song was always too offbeat to end on a perfect cadence.

Cue Exit Music

There are players that, as a fan, you love right from the start, from the first moment you set eyes on them. Brian Lara, for example, is irresistible from the first ball. His every shot is a concentrated display of liquid motion and raw athleticism; every extension seems hyperbolic and even time feels accelerated, ever so slightly, when he’s at the crease. Even his plays-and-misses demand attention. It only takes one flash of that blade, one glance at that ridiculous backlift, to see the innate brilliance of (and in) the man.

Other players take longer to appreciate. Their gifts are more evasive, their qualities more diffuse. Shiv Chanderpaul is one of those players; the stolid demeanour and odd kabuki-breakdance he performs as he waits for the bowler’s delivery often belie the underlying correctness of his technique and the solidity of his temperament. Chaminda Vaas is another who only stands out from the pack after a certain amount of time, and even then he does so only by confounding expectations – through a spirited batting display to even a Test match, or by being the only bowler to keep it tight and extract life out of a pancake-flat one-day pitch, even as he goes wicketless.

And then there are players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, who somehow became a favourite of mine even before I saw him face a single ball.

Catching Our Breath, In Bullet Form

There is little point in recapping India's win yesterday, since anyone reading this will most probably have already seen it for themselves. (The Cricket Watcher's Journal has a pretty comprehensive round-up of news and reactions from the final, in case anyone missed anything). Here, though, are some random thoughts/observations I made during the match: 

• Something that must be noted about Misbah-ul-Haq's little paddle to Sreesanth to end the match: it probably wouldn't have even happened had the game not been played in Johannesburg. The previous delivery was a straight pull for six that I'm pretty certain would have been caught inside the boundary in any other ground in the world.
  
  
• It's a little funny how, out of the entire clan of immensely gifted cricketers who have dominated Indian cricket for more than a decade, the only two who ended up victorious in an international tournament were the two biggest underachievers of the lot -- Virender Sehwag and Ajit Agarkar.
  
  
• I wonder what that final would have been like had Pakistan's best bowler not been injured. Mohammad Asif was clearly below his best yesterday, and it was obvious that there was some little niggle causing him discomfort. Would India have even gotten to 150 if Asif, Gul, and Afridi were all firing? I doubt it. (Incidentally, did Asif's injury have anything to do with his pre-tournament altercation with Shoaib Akhtar? What an interesting sub-plot it would be, if that's the case.)

• So my pre-World Cup predictions ended up, not surprisingly, being completely wrong: I initially had both India and Pakistan going out early. However, I wasn't as far off as it would seem. My reasoning was mostly correct -- I said I didn't expect teams with bad fielding to get very far. And they didn't, really. Except India and Pakistan were actually great fielding teams, all tournament long. (That's right, kids... it's a brave new world we live in.)

• My buddy George has a simple, yet brilliant suggestion for any cricket played in the future: keep the stumps as loose in the ground as they were throughout the World Cup. Seeing them fly off the  and almost decapitate the keeper every time someone was bowled had to one of the coolest enduring images of the past two weeks.
  
  

A Glitch In The Matrix

Not a good time to experience technical difficulties, I guess. Maybe that serves me right, and all of us who griped and bitched about the other World Cup's excessive length... this time, instead, we get a competitive, storybook tournament that just whooshes by in a whirl. I mean, an India v. Pakistan final? You're kidding me, right? And that after a full fortnight of tight, lively games, one of which just happened to be a farcical tie-and-bowl-out between the very same two teams that are playing in the final? That sounds so spectacularly like some crooked bookie's wildest morphine wet dream that I'll discount any sinister motives; it's just too good to be true.

If anyone out there still had any doubts that Twenty20 was destined to sweep through and change the entire cricket landscape in mere months, the events of the last couple of weeks should surely convince them otherwise (well, it should eventually -- I'm sure there will be some denial in many at first). 50-over cricket is a thing of the past, and if the traditionalists want to salvage anything, I suggest they focus on the Test game. It's not untouchable.

Wrong-Footed Henchmen, Aging Youth, and 'Pulling A Diddy'

As I watched them dominate Australia earlier today, I suddenly realised how much the Pakistan team has changed in the past few months, and how much I need to catch up on regarding their new look, new attitude, etc. Some random observations:

• I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Pakistan did a very nice job in the field. (No, don’t laugh, I’m being serious.) They really have helped their cause immensely with some good hustle and a selfless effort from their fielders. (Stop it, really. It’s not a joke.) They have saved their batsmen at least 20 runs through their efforts containing the Australian batsmen. (Yes, I did mean Pakistan. For real! You’re not gonna believe me, are you? Fine.)
  
  
• Sohail Tanvir is a very interesting bowler – it’s nice to see some more idiosyncratic players rising onto the scene. At times during his spell he was variating his pace better than anyone in world not named ‘Daniel Vettori.’ I wonder if it’s just his unorthodox, wrong-footed action (described by my buddy George as, “a fast-medium Paul Adams”) that had the Australian batsman so confused, or if there’s something else lurking behind that deceptively gentle run-up and that cavernous, henchman-to-an-early-Bond-villain visage.

• When did Younis Khan change his name to Younus Khan? And why wasn’t I informed of this? After the Youhana/Yousuf switch a couple of years ago, these are the things I need to be made aware of… Oh and by the way, Ponting better not be serious about dropping the –y from his first name. I didn't accept the 're-monikerisation' from Puffy at the time, and I will certainly not accept it from you now, R-I-C-K-Y.

• Andrew Symonds is throwing the ball. Yes, that’s right -- he’s a chucker. No one will ever mention it, of course, since he is Australian. (I suppose he also seems like a nice enough guy. And besides, who wants to ban a wobbly part-timer from bowling, really?)
  
  
• Memo to Slater, Chapell, and co.: ‘Inexperience at the international level’ ≠ ‘Youth’. Misbah-ul-Haq has been around for quite a while now; do your research. His name always pops up in discussions during periods of renovation and reconstruction for Pakistani cricket, when the selectors feel they need to re-arrange their shop front and apply a few surface coats for the public. Give it two years or so, and he'll be right back to captaining that 'A' squad with little hope for the future.

• Here's a guarantee: Pakistan will never get anywhere in world cricket as long as their worst three batters also happen to be their first three batters. Choose one of those top three and go with him -- cut the other two a cheque, thank them for their services, and send Youn?s Khan up the order to open with the winner.
  

 

If Only He Sucked A Little More

If someone can explain to me why Imran Nazir (a player just good enough to really suck at an international level) is in Pakistan's World Cup squad and Abdul Razzaq isn't, I'd be more than grateful.

Hey, It Worked For Glenn McGrath

Back in 2004, pop culturologist extraordinaire Chuck Klosterman wrote a great article for Spin magazine (here's a copy) where he discussed the "10 Most Accurately Rated Bands" in rock history. That is, artists that were neither 'underrated' nor 'overrated,' but got exactly what they deserved from critics and public alike. The idea itself is too good for me not to steal and shamelessly apply it to cricket sometime in the future, but as I watched highlights of Mohammad Asif playing against India yesterday, I started to wonder how long he'll continue being the most underrated bowler in the world? I'm not sure how many people out there have realised that Asif is already, at the very least, the second best fast bowler in the world. (It's a toss-up between him and Shane Bond at the moment for the top spot, but since the latter only has a couple of good years left, I'll give it to him. Asif will be around for a good decade, if not more.)

Here is last night's top-order demolition: