Nothing in cricket exposes the soul of a team as glaringly as a collapse, writes Imran Yusuf.
The Pakistan team played three days of hard, patient, committed cricket to put themselves in an easy position to win the first Test against Sri Lanka. Then, in a single morning, they lost.
Chasing 163 for victory on the fourth day, Pakistan went from 71-2 at the start of play, to 80-6 seven overs later, to 117 all out just before lunch. You don’t need to be a cricket expert or a demolition man to realise that this constitues a collapse. Requiring a similie to describe this catastrophe, I sorted through some options: collapsed in a heap like a souffle, collapsed one-by-one like a deck of cards, collapsed to the floor as quick as Mohammad Yousuf in a mosque. Ultimately, we need only settle for the following: Pakistan collapsed like ... Pakistan.
There is something unique about our collapses. Seasoned followers of the team know what I'm talking about - you can almost smell it. And so it was on Tuesday morning. Even in our comfortable position, you half-sensed it coming. And then you saw it unfold, wicket by pathetic wicket, and once again this strange feeling took hold: it's as if it was utterly expected.
There’s nothing so revealing in cricket, nothing that exposes the soul of a team as glaringly as a collapse. In fact if you want to know what a cricket team is made of, watch them collapse - or better, resist collapse.
Not for us the timid, meek, rabbit-in-the-headlights collapse of the English. (Cricket followers had in recent times been deprived of this 1990s regular occurence, but after their dismissal for 51 against the Windies earlier in the year, boy do we welcome the return of the English batting collapse. Few spectacles in cricket offer a more spiriting form of Shadenfreude.) When the English collapse, they seem powerless in the face of their sadistic opponents - think of Curtly and Courtney, Waqar and Wasim, McGrath and Warne.
But us, Pakistan, we seem almost complicit in our demise. We will our collapse. It seems less a consquence of our opponent’s sadism and more due to our own frustrated, confused, hopeless masochisism. At least three of our main batsmen - Salman Butt, Kamran Akmal, Misbah-ul-Haq - got out due to unfathomable play; the others just seemed to lose concentration. It's as if a light is switched off (the glowing light of self-awareness) at the same time as a light is switched on (the blazing light of self-destruction). It's as if we suddenly decide, after days of excellent Test cricket, that we don't really fancy being there, and give it all away in less than a session.
This is not to take anything away from Sri Lanka, particularly Thushara and Herath who bowled consistently probing lines and lengths. But even they must be feeling a little bewildered with their opposition as they celebrate this surprising, superb victory. This match joins the countless others which were lost by Pakistan much more than they were won by their opponents.
