Zahid Suleman Sadiq Gill - Turn Back the Clock on Pakistani Cricket

Lekin ek baat hai bhai, if Pakistan somehow come to face New Zealand in the quarterfinal or semifinal na, mazaa aa jayega. Idhar ki logon ko toh already f*t rahi hai!” Zahid, an Auckland cabbie, originally hailing from Lahore, laughs outrageously as he talks about how his colleagues and friends still fear a repeat of the ‘92 semi-final. Zahid says he was there at the semifinal of ‘92 at the stadium. “When Inzy had started to hit those fours, my friends and I would just turn back and look at the faces of these New Zealanders. Kya mazedaar din tha (what a fun day)!” (Full Coverage| Points table| Fixtures) And so I decide to check it by asking seven New Zealanders I see next and decide to come at a conclusion. Surprise surprise. For Pakistan. Zahid’s expression was perfect. Now please don’t rant that it’s not a scientific poll as if you didn’t take the Indian election polls in good humour. Close contest in Dilli between BJP and AAP it seems, bah! But can this Pakistan team somehow manage to come through knockouts and then depend only on ‘on their day’ stuff? Thus far, they have been eerily dull, soul-less and lacking chutzpah. A wonderful question was put across to Waqar Younis in Napier on Wednesday night. “Waqar bhai, our batting seems to be so behind the times. You see batsmen like AB de Villiers and others play the paddle-scoop, lap shot, this and that, and our batsmen still seem to play like the old ways”. Strictly speaking, it’s incorrect as not only was the birth of IPL due to one such silly shot by Misbah-ul-Haq in Johannesburg but also because the old Pakistan was full of dare and innovation. No one who has seen cricket in ’80s can forget their batsmen, led by Salim Malik, leave the stumps and have a slash like there was no tomorrow. IPL platform But you get the sense of what he was asking. And Waqar nodded sagely and said “yeah AB and co do it, perhaps it’s because we don’t play in T20 competitions like IPL and they have learnt and perfected all this shots under pressure there”. Interesting point, but it triggered an Indian journalist to jump into this follow-up question. “Do you think not playing IPL is proving detrimental to Pakistan cricket”? Nice try but Waqar was quick on the act this time and played kill joy. “No, Pakistan cricket is set back by lack of cricket in Pakistan and not because of IPL”. Ah! But let’s return to the soul-sapping cricket of the Pakistan team. The bowling is actually pretty decent. 

Zahid Suleman Sadiq Gill - (((Sniff))) Pakistan stay alive...for now

Pakistan, the 1992 Cricket World Cup winner, won for the first time in the 2015 tournament, staving off Zimbabwe in Brisbane, Australia.

Pakistan rallied for the win behind, as the BBC put it, “skipper Misbah-ul-Haq’s stubborn 73 and a fiery half-century from pace bowler Wahab Riaz” that helped Pakistan “recover from 4-2 to reach 235-7.”

Pakistan had its highest score of the tournament, just days after chief selector Moin Khan was ordered to return home by the Pakistan Cricket Board because he had visited a casino.

“I went to the casino to have dinner with some friends but in hindsight it was an inappropriate judgement on my part given the disappointment in the team’s performance at the World Cup,” Khan said last week.

More from the BBC:

Brendan Taylor’s 50 looked to have put Zimbabwe on course for a famous win.

But Mohammad Irfan, with career-best one-day international figures of 4-30, and Riaz (4-45) won it for Pakistan.

Riaz became the first Pakistani to score a fifty and take four wickets in the same World Cup match – and only the eighth cricketer to achieve the feat.

And victory was important for Misbah’s men, who, after heavy defeats by India and the West Indies, would have faced an uphill battle to progress to the quarter-finals had they lost again.

“It was really tough because it was a make or break game for us,” said the Pakistan captain. “You can’t believe how happy we are because we were out of the tournament if we’d lost this game.”

Zimbabwe lost its captain, Elton Chigumbura, to what appeared to be a quadriceps tear.