The history of Cricket

That Pakistan cricket exists at all is a miracle. The rulers of the British empire did not intend the game to be played by anyone other than white men. As the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha observed, cricket, to Europeans in colonial India, was "an extended escape" from the country's chatter, dirt and smells. The natives were regarded as too weak, effeminate and irrational to master the "manly game". Though cricket was played in India in the 18th century, Indians themselves took no part until the middle of the 19th. Only after a prolonged struggle were they allowed the facilities to form clubs and hold organised games.

In the area that became Pakistan, the game remained almost wholly European until the end of the century and, even at independence in 1947, it was still relatively weak, with just two turf wickets in the whole country. As Peter Oborne observes in this absorbing history, it could easily have become a mere satellite of India, as Ireland was of England after 1922. Pakistan was not allowed to play full official test matches until 1952.

Yet it then won the second test match it played, against India in India, and went on to beat England at the Oval in London in 1954 (by contrast, India didn't win in England until 1971) and Australia at home in 1956. Indeed, Pakistan did not lose a test on home soil until 1959 and, over its first eight years, won eight out of 29 matches, losing nine.

The cricket was, to be sure, a little dull – the first star batsman, Hanif Mohammad, broke records for slow scoring – but, as one commentator put it, success "was one of the early bonds of nationhood". Many early players were born in India and their families were among Muslims who fled to Pakistan when the subcontinent was bloodily divided. Several, including Fazal Mahmood, who bowled England out at the Oval, were stalwarts of the Muslim League which campaigned for a separate state. The first captain, AH Kardar, was an Islamic socialist who persuaded the government to put money into cricket and to give players sinecures in the police, armed services, railways, public works and other state agencies.

Since the 1950s, Pakistan has produced cricketers more gifted, and certainly more exciting to watch, than those early pioneers: Shoaib Akhtar, the "Rawalpindi Express" who is reckoned by some to have bowled faster than any man in history; Imran Khan, an all-rounder as good as Ian Botham; Shahid Afridi who has hit more sixes than anyone else in one-day internationals. Moreover, the players come from far wider social and geographical backgrounds than their predecessors; cricket, it is said, is played even in some remote Taliban-controlled regions. Sometimes new stars are taken off the streets; in 1979, for example, a 21-year-old spin bowler called Tauseef Ahmed was selected for the test team after just one first-class match and took seven Australian wickets. Pakistan cricket has been inventive as well as entertaining. Sarfraz Nawaz, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis pioneered reverse swing, whereby an old ball, highly polished on one side, swings at express pace in the opposite direction to what the batsman expects. The spin bowler Saqlain Mushtaq invented the "doosra", a leg‑break disguised as an off-break.

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Yet England supporters who despair at how their team can switch from being close to world-beaters to serial losers within 12 months should spare a thought for their counterparts in Pakistan. Over the past 50 years, Pakistan has alternated brilliant victories with abject defeats in bewildering fashion. Captains rarely last longer than a year or two and players are dropped, re-selected and then dropped again without apparent rhyme or reason. The English media treat these episodes with amused condescension, though, until a decade or so ago, England's selection decisions were scarcely less erratic and, as the Kevin Pietersen saga shows, clashes of personality and failures of discipline aren't confined to what journalists portray as volatile orientals.

Pakistan rarely get much credit even when they do win. Before neutral umpires were agreed, home victories were often attributed to umpiring bias, though, as Oborne shows, there is no statistical evidence of any such thing. On a second-team tour to Pakistan in the 1950s, English players were so disgruntled with one umpire that, led by their captain Donald Carr, who was educated at Repton, Sandhurst and Oxford, they "kidnapped" the offender and doused him with water. Another tour was almost abandoned when the England captain, Mike Gatting, had a famous on-field row with the umpire Shakoor Rana. Other Pakistan successes were attributed to cheating. Reverse swing was held to be the result of illegal (or at least morally suspect) ball tampering until England used it to beat Australia in 2005.

Over the last decade, Pakistan, without ever achieving consistency, has still managed some outstanding performances, twice beating an England side fresh from Ashes success with some comfort. Its survival as a major cricketing force is a greater miracle than its original emergence. Since the turn of the century, one disaster has followed another. A tour by New Zealand was abandoned after a suicide bomber struck a hotel where both teams were staying; another ended when the visiting Sri Lankans' bus was attacked; during a tour of England, an umpire accused the team of ball tampering; their coach, Bob Woolmer, died in mysterious circumstances during a World Cup tournament in the West Indies; three players, including the captain, were implicated in a betting scandal exposed by the News of the World.

Because of terrorist threats, Pakistan cannot now play internationals on its home soil. Since the 2008 Mumbai bombings (blamed by India on Pakistan), it cannot play India at all outside international tournaments such as the World Cup, thus depriving it of the game's most lucrative market for TV rights. Nor can the players appear in the Indian Premier League where money flows as freely as in English football's Premier League – all of which helps to explain, if not excuse, their openness to offers from operators in the subcontinent's largely illegal betting industry. Pakistan have become a peripatetic team playing "home" matches in the Gulf states. Yet whenever they seem doomed to permanent decline, the players turn in another glittering performance. In a more stable political environment and with more reliable management, they could rival Australia and West Indies in producing consistently world-beating teams.

It is easy to see why Oborne's journalistic instincts, as well as his enthusiasm for the game, attracted him to a history of Pakistan cricket. It has drama, intrigue, politics, heroism, villainy, and quite a bit of violence. A decade ago, Oborne wrote a brilliant and moving biography of the South-African-born cricketer Basil D'Oliveira. Alas, the task of creating a similarly coherent and uplifting narrative out of Pakistan cricket is beyond even his considerable writing skills; two-thirds of the way through, he abandons the attempt, comparing himself rather grandly to Gibbon trying to chart the declining centuries of the Roman empire, and opts for a thematic treatment of the last 20 years.

All the same, for anyone wanting to understand the complexities of Pakistan cricket or to relive its many days of glory, this is as good as it's likely to get. Handicapped by the paucity of reliable written sources, Oborne interviewed dozens of Pakistani players, coaches, administrators and commentators, and sometimes put himself in physical danger to get at the truth, though it often remains elusive.

One academic critic defined the genre of magic realism as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe". This perfectly captures the essence of Pakistan cricket, which Oborne describes as "magical and marvellous". Perhaps that's the best way to read this book: as a non-fiction version of magic realism.