COMMENT: Are Inzamam’s cornered tigers hungry enough for win?

WHAT do you do after you have lost a Test by an innings and 120 runs? The natural reaction would be to retreat into a corner and lick your wounds, but Inzamam-ul-Haq does not have that luxury. On the morning of Friday, weather permitting, he will have to toss a coin at Headingley.

There he will be, coming out in his signature walk, steps measured and stately, demeanor grave and ponderous. When things are going well, the body language of his leadership does look the part, but revival from defeat demands a different posture. A little pep in the step, a little sly in the eye will not hurt at Headingley.

The series is still alive and at stake is nothing less than the judgment of history. You don’t want to become the first Pakistan captain to lose a Test rubber in England in 25 years. The three men who have led Pakistan to series victories in England — Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, and Wasim Akram — today sit comfortably at Pakistan’s table of grandmasters. Since his ascent to the topmost batting cadre, Inzamam too has been pressing for a spot at this table. But Old Trafford was hardly the way to go about it.

England’s plan was to catch Pakistan on a lively track, knowing that generations of Pakistan batsmen have failed to cope with the fast rising ball. It was a plan emboldened by the absence of Shoaib Akhtar which ensured that Pakistan will not retaliate. Inzamam fettered whatever advantage he had by choosing to bat first. To an extent you can sympathize with his reluctance to bat last on a pitch that threatened to take turn later, but this game does not forgive negative moves and he ended up batting last on it anyway.

It is also a cruel game. Last February, when Mohammad Asif kept hitting the seam at Karachi, fans dreamed of seeing his skill at Headingley. The moment is here but all we have for now is the proverbial ‘what if’.

In the absence of a physically fit Steve Harmison of their own, Pakistan are desperate for ideas. Technical batting adjustments are one option, and Javed Miandad has suggested that a more open-chested stance rather than the typical side-on one will help our batsmen better negotiate snorters aimed at the chest and shoulders. But theory is one thing and practice yet another.

Lacking resources for a clever technical gambit, Pakistan need an urgent, jolting strategy that will throw open the chessboard. In this battle of wits, the answer must lie in a swift overhauling of approach and attitude. At Old Trafford on Saturday, Bob Woolmer said in a post-match interview that the Headingly Test looms ahead like a do-or-die cup final. His choice of metaphor was extremely apt. In 1992, it was Inzamam who came out at the head of the pack when Imran roared at his World Cup squad to lash out like cornered tigers. There could not be a better circumstance for Inzamam to re-ignite his old captain’s inspiring call to arms.

We can take comfort that Inzamam is as good a man for the job as any. As a batsman, he is no stranger to creating turnarounds and resurrecting lost causes. As captain too, in the recent past, he has led from the front to take Pakistan to stirring series equalizers at Bangalore and Kingston. He now finds himself with a team that respects and reveres him, an adept coach with solid command of English tactics and playing conditions, and a fan base of millions who are desperately willing him and his men to succeed.

Somehow, somewhere in the next three days, Inzamam has to reclaim the spirit that lifted him to his World Cup performances in 1992, and he has to breathe that spirit into every member of the team. Let them leap out and fight like cornered tigers at Headingley. There is no reason that the likes of Umar Gul cannot make it explode from a length, or the likes of Faisal Iqbal confidently navigate their way through the corridor of uncertainty.

Over the last several seasons,

Inzamam has ably filled the batting anchor’s mantle left vacant by Miandad. At Headingley we will learn if he can also fill the captain’s mantle that has not been properly worn since the Imran-Miandad days. A spot at the grandmasters’ table stands reserved.

The author, a neurologist by profession, has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography ‘Cutting Edge’ and also writes for Wisden and Cricinfo.

COMMENT: Why this bad?

MUCH has been seen, felt, endured, written, read, said and heard about the total breakdown of civic life in the aftermath of the rain in Karachi; what remain unexplored is a way to deal with seasonal downpours, year after year, and the pathology behind the civic dysfunction gripping this city. Some cliches are very apt: Karachi is the hand that feeds the entire country’s economy; many believe it is often the hand that is twisted to only give and not take anything in return. The misery endured by the teeming millions of this metropolis over the past 72 hours is no less than that suffered by a people entrapped, say, in a war zone. Does it have to be this bad?

Civic problems abound and their resolution remains elusive. A mere three inches of rain (at its heaviest in North Karachi) was hard to sustain by a rustic sewerage system. The luxury of swift rainwater drainage has remained a pipedream for an otherwise water-starved city. When it starts pouring Karachiites realise that power, too, is a blessing to be savoured and be thankful for when it’s not tripped off. Paying the highest tariffs for basic amenities like water and power has not secured the consumers the right to have these in a running condition. Where have this financial year’s projected, unprecedented, high budgetary allocations gone? The trumpeted campaigns to clear and cleanse the city’s drains ahead of the rainy season have come to naught — much like the hollow slogans of the ruling coalition’s politicians who are too busy fighting over the distribution of ‘spoils’ they collect from citizens in the name of taxes.

No people deserve to be treated like the people of Karachi. What is woefully lacking in this burgeoning city now bursting at the seams is a sense of ownership. It has become a massive, unruly outpost governed by a myriad of commercial interests with no sense of coherence about it. Why? Because it happens to be a port city, an entry and exit point for the bulk of goods coming into or going out of the country, and because it also happens to be our financial capital? In any other country the authorities would have made sure that something as routine as a seasonal shower did not bring its financial hub to a standstill.

Banks turned away many a needy customer wishing to withdraw cash on the first of the month for shortage of hard currency in their coffers. Service stations refused to pump CNG in inclement weather, and some even ran out of petrol by the evening. Others simply were shut down for lack of power or staff that could not make it to work owing to the absence of public transport. Inter-city bus operators and airlines fleeced the intending travellers heading out of the city. That’s some vision for the future of Karachi.

Is the current state of the city not bad for the country’s image? Would anyone in their right mind want to invest in a city that cannot even deal with what would have passed as a normal seasonal rain anywhere else? There have been several master plans since the 1970s to rid Karachi of its civic problems, but none has been implemented because the will to do so has been lacking. Over the years, as such master plans have gathered dust, the problems have been compounded. If a fully representative city district government, like the one we are told is in office today, does not have the honesty and the required courage to admit its failure in the preceding three days, there is little hope that can be pinned on it.

The truth is that Karachi has never in recent memory faced the kind of prolonged power breakdowns, water closures and totally inept drainage as it has suffered in the aftermath of the rain this season. Surely, some one somewhere should have been found napping while the city sank, inch by inch, bit by bit. The caving in of a long portion of the I I Chundrigar Road and the sinking of the city’s solitary underpass, which took more than a year to build, cannot be just brushed aside as minor accidents, not to mention the conflicting death toll of anywhere between seven and 27 that various sources said the rain claimed.

The due coverage not given to the prevailing civic crisis by the so-called independent electronic media remained a mystery. Why is it that nobody worth the name has cried murder over the apathy shown to citizens’ plight by the authorities concerned? The odd incidents of a handful of aggrieved residents who dared to take to the street in utter frustration here and there were played down. The political opposition, too, was conspicuous by its absence from TV screens. There was to be no finger-pointing of any kind at any one; only dubious claims of ‘all correct’ by a failed civic administration.

Uncanny as it may sound, one is reminded of the ridiculous claims of the ‘heavy mandate’ that the Sharif government had flouted in your face. Then came the real deluge and all was swept away.