Any overview of Pakistan’s recent Test tour to Ireland and England has to start with Mickey Arthur for he is the real star in the pack. The rest are rookies learning the ropes. When the team does well, Mickey is the man in the limelight. So it is only fair to keep the limelight where it belongs.

In his own words after the embarrassment at Headingley, Mickey said he was “incredibly disappointed” and for good measure he clarified that he was being “brutally honest” about his feelings. The words seem to sound alright, but there is a bit of a problem there if you look closely enough. Logic dictates that we, the fans and followers of Pakistan cricket, have the right to be disappointed, but the man who is supposed to pre-empt such disasters and has taken a headstrong approach to whatever his targets are — and is getting paid and rewarded for it all — should not be just disappointed; he should commit hara-kiri … of the professional variety of course. And the fans and followers of Pakistan cricket feel that way only because they are being “brutally honest” which seems to be the preferred way with Mickey.

And lest it be misunderstood, it is not the defeat at Headingley which was irksome; it was the manner of it. Though we made heavy weather of it, we did pull it off against Ireland. And Lord’s was just heavenly. But when the English backlash came, the team just got whipped into submission … utter and absolute submission.

The ‘high’ at Lord’s and the ‘low’ at Headingley have to be put together to make sense of what a Pakistani outfit is all about. Individually, they don’t mean much

Pakistan could last 48 overs in the first innings and 46 in the second. Naturally, they never touched — or even came close to touching — the 200-run mark in either attempt. The match lasted a mere 200 overs

out of the available 450. This represents actual play time of two days and an hour. The players were apparently trying to come up to Chief Selector Inzamamul Haq’s expectations as he had justified his pickings ahead of the tour that the team had been selected with the ODI World Cup in mind, and that, as we know, is a 50-over format. Their shot selection clearly indicated that much.

Mickey would surely love to point out that there have been occasions in the past when Pakistan had lost its games inside two days and by that yardstick, pushing the game into the third day, even if just, represents progress. But while he would love to say this, he is shrewd enough to resist the temptation and avoid actually saying it in public because the ‘high’ at Lord’s have also been experienced many a time in the past. And the two elements put together mean just what Mickey would never want it to mean; that Pakistan continues to be, under his charge, what it has long been without him.

Call it mercurial, call it unpredictable, call it a rollercoaster, call it what you want, but Pakistan’s basic characteristics have remained unchanged regardless of who happens to be calling the shots at any particular time. This, in turn, means, Mickey or no Mickey, the team would have done the same. So why have him?

Coming to the players, nobody did worse than Sarfraz Ahmed, the captain. There were moments — especially in Ireland — where his performance behind the wickets resembled that of Kamran Akmal. In front of the wickets, his gung-ho batting took him or the team anywhere but to the brink. And, as captain, it was not rare to find him clueless. His immediate future is secure in the knowledge that Mickey and Inzamam are comfortable with him. But he did himself no good on any front.

While Mohammad Abbas, Shadab Khan and Faheem Ashraf did make their mark on the tour, it is inevitable, for obvious reasons, to take a closer look at — yes, you guessed it right — Imam-ul-Haq, the nephew of the chief selector. After the knock at Malahide, where he seriously anchored the innings and saw Pakistan cross the line, there have been emotional reactions both in conventional and social media with people, including some professional journalists, apologising to the man for having raised a finger at his selection. His one innings was considered irrefutable proof of his talent without any margin for the fact that it had come against a side that was playing Test cricket for the first time. In England, he averaged 18.6 runs per innings.

Across the twin tour, he scored 137 runs in six innings at an average of 34.25, which incidentally is pretty much a replica of his first class average of 34.46 on the basis of which he was selected and everybody shouted of nepotism. And of those 137 runs, 74 did come in that one innings at Malahide. Leave that out and you are left with 63 runs across five innings at an average of 15.75 runs per innings. Is that what you call justification of merit? And that too at the top of the batting order?

The selection was flawed, if not mala fide, on the basis of past record, and latest numbers have proved the naysayers right. There is hardly any debate worth its name on this factor. But, also, there is hardly any debate worth its name over the potential of the lad to make it big if he is allowed to hone his talent without controversies staining his name so early in his cricketing career.

There was another opener in the days gone by who suffered, despite his enormous talent, all through his career because his case was rushed through unnecessarily. Shoaib Mohammad could never be a regular member of the national side because his initial selection was untimely, and, in a way, pushed. Imam is facing that same pressure today, and while he may not be as unlucky as Shoaib was, owing to his background, he deserves to be left alone and grow at his own pace. If you don’t get the drift of the ‘background’ element, ask any Karachiite!

humair.ishtiaq@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 15th, 2018