|
April 27, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 04/27/2006 in Pakistan
“Blink and you’ll miss it,” went Cricinfo’s "All Today’s Yesterdays" column today. For a moment I mistook it for a reference to Shahid Afridi’s 15 day old retirement that got reversed today. It seems only a few hundred left-button clicks since I read Osman Samiuddin’s breaking news about Afridi withdrawing himself from Test matches. The wise man that he is, Osman remembered to add these last moment prophetic words before rounding off his article:
“Given the sudden timing of his announcement, however, and the fierce speculation now surrounding the circumstances of his axing from the last Test, it is unlikely that we have heard the last of this.”
Continue reading "The 15 day retirement"
Comments (3)
April 26, 2006
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 04/26/2006 in Pakistan
Shahid Afridi has had no shortage of people urging him to come back from his “retirement”. Because of the sort of player Afridi is his fan following has traditionally been very large so such a response was always on the cards. Shehrayar Khan, PCB’s top man, has like most other people in Pakistan, been amongst those countless others who have tried to persuade Afridi to change his mind, but the other day he did not let this general good natured "please don't go" mood of the reaction to Afridi's retirement stop him from letting Afridi know in a clear cut way that he ought to be prepared for repercussions if he decided to stick to his plan.
Continue reading "Miandad's at it again"
Comments (0)
April 4, 2006
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 04/04/2006 in Pakistan
Two days ago Osman Samiuddin asked "Heart or head?". A bit of both perhaps I thought. Because at heart, I'm a big fan of Inzamam. I can't perceive how any one cannot be. I adore the man, his batting, his understated, often cheeky sense of humor and laid back personality, I absolutely adore him for all this. But that kept aside, I do have some reservations, pretty serious ones at that, about his leadership style.
Continue reading "Inzi or Younis?"
Comments (10)
February 16, 2006
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 02/16/2006 in Pakistan
A good cricket team, very generally speaking, is a team that plays the basics of the game well, wins well in conditions that suits it, and doesn’t disgrace it self when faced with different ones. Under Bob Woolmer and Inzamam collectively, Pakistan have showed, at least at times and in bits and parts that it can fulfill this definition of a good team.
Continue reading "Season Review: The plague of self doubt"
Comments (5)
December 16, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/16/2005 in Pakistan
Imagine standing 100 yards opposite a taking off airplane, train and triple-decker bus, all three filled to capacity; imagine the noise, the hues, and the ambiance in such a scenario. Then multiply it all by two. The result would be something vaguely like the atmosphere I experienced yesterday sitting around with 40,000 or so cricket starved Karachites, about half a dozen rows back in the Waqar Hasan Enclosure.
The official capacity for the NSK is only 33,000, but I suppose that only caters for spectators that have occupied seats, and not the ones that are sitting on the stairs leading up to the seats, in between the seats, in the foyers besides the lavatories, and in the little space here, there and everywhere. No potential vantage point was left vacant. When you read somewhere in the papers today that yesterday’s match was a full house, the papers were lying. It wasn’t a full house, it was an over-full house.
Continue reading "From 100 yards away"
Comments (4)
December 7, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/07/2005 in Pakistan
Fast bowlers....they are like the reflective eyes of a predating carnivore crossing your nocturnal highway in the distance. They declare themselves unabashed, as if the rest of the team is selected to support them. They ask for attention like a newborn placed in a damp cradle. They charge in, they rant, they sulk, they go over the top, they exult as if there is no tomorrow – and they expect to be loved for it! These hot-headed guys, blessed with pace generating mechanism running on fuel supplied from a colossal ego, can be as terrible to the thin-skinned folk in the dressing room as they are abominable to the opposition players quivering at the crease.
Simply put, they like to play king and, insufferably for some victims, are often allowed that. Rightly so, to be fair (or unfair – who cares!). For they often have what others only fantasise of having – an ability to strike like the king cobra; when the victim knows it is generally too late. None does any of these better than Shoaib Akhtar though.
Continue reading "It’s SHO-time, folks!"
Comments (16)
December 3, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/03/2005 in Pakistan
Nothing succeeds like success, and one of the greatest pleasures of life is succeeding when people said you couldn’t. England experienced that better then most when they defeated Australia 2-1 in the Ashes after Glenn McGrath predicted his Australian side would win 5-0. Now it’s Pakistan’s turn to enjoy that kind of pleasure. A 2-0 victory over an English side that came here looking to assert the hype generated by their own press and followers apropos them being the best side in the world is a memorable feat.
Made even more impressive by the fact that it has been achieved by what is at heart a young, emerging side. Even more remarkably, the only time Pakistan was able to field (or chose to rather) its strongest XI (in Faisalabad) they failed to win. The miracle at Multan was achieved without Rana or Afridi, and in Lahore, Younis Khan and Afridi were missing again. Abdul Razzaq, an integral member of this side over the last season, was injured through out. What then, one may ask, forced a result that will have out lived the expectations of even the most sanguine of Pakistani fans?
Continue reading "Something special"
Comments (19)
November 29, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 11/29/2005 in Pakistan
In between the successive days of test I suffer from a kind of ennui, a mixture of listlessness and willful melancholy, even on days like today, when one’s favored team hasn’t disappointed contrary to reputation. The best way to alleviate this sort of boredom, which results due to over-anticipation of the next day’s play, is first by gloating over the opposition’s inability to play spin or fast bowling, depending upon which part of the world they are from.
And when you’ve got tired of that (which is quite improbable usually but in dire straits) the next step is to indulge in lofty glorification and totally out-of-context exaltation of your favorite players. Sadly for those who are reading this, today is one of those days when I’m in dire straits. Until I penned this down, I was under the influence of the blogger’s version of a writer’s block. Hence I must undertake the second option, and my choice for player who will be on the receiving end of such grandeur praise as mentioned above, is Rana Naved-ul-Hasan.
Continue reading "Rana Naved-ul-Hasan"
Comments (19)
|
