AT least on one count I have been proven wrong. I wrote last week when the squad was not yet announced that regardless of what may or may not happen, I expected Mohammad Sami and Shoaib Akhtar to be on the flight to India. While the former’s name is very much there, the latter’s is not. But, frankly, the reasons appear to be a bit more than what it has been made out to look.
Taking it on face value, though, it is a change that can work either way. It has the potential to make those selected to prove their worth in the absence of Shoaib Akhtar, who has the knack of stealing limelight for one reason or the other. If he took wickets, he was the star; if he didn’t, he was the one scorned. Either way, others could enjoy the relative safety of the back benches. The equation will change on the tour ahead, for each one will have to stand up and get counted. If this happens, it will work well for Pakistan because the team will perform well, and, in the long-term context, it will make Shoaib concentrate that much more on his comeback, and if that happens, it will surely be the best thing that will have happened to Pakistan Cricket in a long time.
On the other hand, Shoaib’s absence from the team may cause a few drooping shoulders among the Pakistanis, and, resultantly, high spirits in the Indian camp. I hope it will be a case of the former rather than the later, and the team would come out stronger at the end of the series.
The big question as I write these lines continue to be about the series actually taking place. Having been postponed once, and with just days to go, signals coming out from India are at best mixed, if not negative. The controversy over television rights for the series continue to simmer. It is quite intriguing that even though it has happened so frequently in the last few years, the Indian authorities have not been able to find a solution to it. All they have been doing during this time is to find a quick fix before every series that is played on Indian soil.
It happens nowhere except in India, and the ICC, I must say, has shown remarkable and somewhat unnecessary patience in this regard. It may be a matter of routine for the Indians, including their players, but it is certainly not routine stuff for the visiting teams who struggle to concentrate on cricket when they do not know if the tour will actually go ahead or they will be simply unpacking their stuff at home.
It happens with all teams visiting India, but in the case of Pakistan, there is a little extra uncertainty caused by Indian hardliners who have already tried to disturb BCCI’s preparation for the tour by targeting playing surfaces at match venues, and issuing highly volatile statements. The smooth manner in which the Indian tour of Pakistan was conducted just a year ago seems to have skipped Indian minds, at least some of them. It is a pity that Pakistanis are not even expecting those sentiments to be reciprocated by the Indians. The moral upper hand is with Pakistan, for the Indians would have refused to play in Pakistan had their been twenty per cent as much political acrimony here ahead of a tour by them. That the government or the PCB is not making an issue out of it is something that deserves due praise.
AT least on one count I have been proven wrong. I wrote last week when the squad was not yet announced that regardless of what may or may not happen, I expected Mohammad Sami and Shoaib Akhtar to be on the flight to India. While the former’s name is very much there, the latter’s is not. But, frankly, the reasons appear to be a bit more than what it has been made out to look.
