It is risky business to comment on a Test match that is midway and though India has an iron grip on it, it is far from over. But some observations can be made on the periphery of it.
The first is that it is extremely disappointing that it is played virtually before an empty ground.
The cricket fans of Multan appeared to have stayed away. Is it because a Test match does not have the same appeal as the one-day game? Is there some disappointment that Pakistan lost the one-day series and this is the way the cricket fans are conveying their disappointment?
Is it that Multan has no great tradition of hosting Test matches? I can only compare it with Faisalabad and no matter who the opponents were, we would always get a good crowd there.
The second observation I would like to make is about the wicket that has been prepared. In an ideal world the curator brooks no nonsense and does not pander to the demands of the home team. All the more reason why a more sporting wicket should have been prepared which gave some assistance to Pakistan's fast bowlers.
But we don't live in an ideal world and I am certain some guidelines would have been provided to the curator. That is the whole meaning of home advantage. I find it hard to swallow that we gave away the home advantage. Pakistan's strength was in its fast bowling and the team that was picked, as the playing eleven, was an acknowledgement of this.
Yet it should have been obvious to our think-tank at first glance that the wicket had nullified Pakistan's advantage. Who should be held responsible? Imran Khan said on television that the wicket had been "tailor-made" for the Indian batsmen.
I think the Pakistani cricket fans deserve and are entitled to some explanation and one hopes that the explanation will be forthright rather than couched in doublespeak.
If India goes one-up in the series, it will be sitting pretty. It has the batting to lock Pakistan out. Even worse they have been able to score 675 and the fear-factor of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami will have been eliminated.
Pakistan dropped catches as a matter of routine and the general level of fielding was anything but athletic. Yet, we feel that there is no need for a fielding coach or a fitness trainer. In the ODIs our bowlers gave away wides and no-balls as if they were free samples. Yet we felt that there was no need of a bowling coach. It is mind-boggling that we should be so out of touch with the modern game.
When a team as a whole fields poorly, it is not only that it is lacking in skills but its fitness-level is also poor. Every team has specialist fielders. Our fielders are moved about all over the field.
India's Aakash Chopra is a specialist close-in fielder and that's where we will find him, not at sweeper cover in one over and at long-on in the next. No matter how the Multan Test match ends up, Pakistan has looked unprepared in several disciplines of the game. We cannot pass on the responsibility to the players for this state of affairs.
Long before the Indians arrived in Pakistan, I had written in this column that the PCB must make sure that our former Test cricketers should not only be invited to watch the matches but should be honoured and shown the respect that was due to them. Precisely the opposite has happened.
They have been treated shabbily and some of them were so hurt that they were forced to go public and address a press conference. They were not a charity case that they should have been sent one ticket each for the Rs500 stand, which was adding insult to injury.
In the pioneering days of Pakistan cricket, Fazal Mahmood and Imtiaz Ahmed were national heroes and but for their immense contribution, Pakistan's fate as a cricket playing nation would be similar to that of Bangladesh today. A.H. Kardar knitted a team from a bunch of amateurs that became a champion team.
The stars of that team were Fazal Mahmood and Imtiaz Ahmed along with Hanif Mohammad. Fazal won crucial Test matches for Pakistan. He was the best bowler of his kind in the world.
Imtiaz was a batsman who brought the crowds to the matches and radio listeners would tell me that always knew that Imtiaz was batting because there was a special excitement in my voice.
Both were good friends of mine and I knew how proud they were to be wearing national colours. There was no money in the game and playing for one's country was its only reward. There are Fazal Mahmood and Imtiaz Ahmed enclosures at our ground but we couldn't spare a ticket for them to come and see the matches.
Many of our ex-Test cricketers have been made MCC members and the MCC feels it is an honour to have them as members. All I can say to the young generation is to be anything they like but don't be a national hero.
A national hero is not only forgotten but snubbed and sometimes insulted. I can understand the hurt that they have felt but if it is any consolation to these former stars, there is still a lot of love for them from those who saw them play in their glory days.
