Stani Army

Calls for clemency as the kid is caught in the corruption

“They got their hooks into him as a baby, at a time when he would have had few confidants in the dressing room, few colleagues he could have gone to for guidance. These men, his team-mates, were meant to look after him; instead they corrupted him, blackened his soul and diminished his talent.

Look at Aamer’s no-ball. It is a joke. It is so exaggerated, so utterly out of keeping with his bowling performance on Friday that it attracted the attention of the television commentators.

Look at Asif’s. Barely over, a small misjudgement, hardly noticeable. To the naked eye, one man looks as if he knows what he is doing, the other hasn’t a clue. If the allegations are correct, both are cheating, but the older man appears better at it; one might even say more practised.” Martin Samuel – Daily Mail

“When I heard on Saturday night that Pakistan were involved in a match-fixing scandal, I immediately thought two things. The first was: I’m not massively surprised. The second was: please, don’t let it be Mohammad Aamer.When it turned out the lad was involved, it felt hugely disappointing. Mohammad Asif has got himself into scrapes before, but Aamer has been a breath of fresh air all summer. He’s revived the dying art of proper fast bowling and his future looked fantastic. Now it’s been tarnished. Lord’s felt a shallow place to be yesterday.” Nasser Hussain – Daily Mail

“the pain of witnessing a young boy of the most beguiling talent and apparently sunny nature making what might just prove to be his last strides in a theatre of sport he had come to command so brilliantly, so quickly.

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The PCB needs to drop Salman Butt and the other three named players with immediate effect

It’s been suggested by some writers that the remainder of Pakistan’s tour should be stopped after Sunday’s match fixing allegations. Fixer Mazhar Majeed was taped telling  the undercover News of the World reporter that two of the upcoming ODIs against England had been marked out to be fixed. This has rightly raised doubts over the legitimacy of the contest between the two sides during the rest of the tour.

But as long as the players who the allegations were brought against are withdrawn from the squad, stopping the tour will serve no purpose. We must think of the Pakistan fans and the players in the squad that are completely innocent. We must think of the host nation and the losses they will suffer due to any abandonment.

The chances of the plans for the two matches that were to be fixed going ahead are pretty slim now. The issue has come to the world’s attention and any player would not even consider putting a foot wrong, pardon the pun, in the ODIs and Twenty20s to come. Should the PCB drop the suspected players – including Salman Butt who was refereed to as the ring leader – then the alleged plans to fix the two ODIs would have even less chance of going ahead. Though slight supporter suspicion will remain, the two points above would almost guarantee that the integrity of the contest in the remaining fixtures is maintained. Stopping the tour would be an overreaction and pretty pointless.

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The News of the World Newspaper is reporting that the Pakistan team has been involved in match fixing in the final Test at Lord’s. The paper’s undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood, set up the sting after tracking down a match fixer by the name of Mazhar Majeed. Majeed agreed that he would arrange for the Pakistan bowlers, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir, to bowl no-balls at exactly the agreed point in the match in exchange for £150,000. This form of match fixing is know as spot fixing, whereby bets are placed on certain aspects of a game rather than the result.

In footage which will send a shudder through Pakistan fans, Mazhar Majeed is seen telling the reporter exactly at which point Amir and Asif will bowl no-balls in the Lord’s Test.  Majeed tells the reporter that it will be the first ball of the third over and the last ball of the tenth, bowled by Amir and Asif respectively. Shockingly, this is exactly what happens and in the case of Amir, he no-balls half a foot over the crease. If it is proved that the video was filmed before the event then the evidence I’m afraid looks pretty damning. Majeed’s other promises to the reporter that turned out to be correct were another no-ball from Amir and a maiden over batted out by captain Salman Butt.

Crooked Majeed, went on to name Captain Salman Butt and wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal as two other players he has on side. He bragged that he has links with Indian bookies, manages ten of the Pakstani players and works “very closely with the PCB”

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Pakistan have announced the squad for the upcoming ODI series and Twenty Internationals against England and there are a few interesting changes. It does seem that one squad of 16 has been announced for both formats with the likes of Abdur Rehman and Shoaib Malik who had made  the 14 man Twenty20 squad that beat Australia 2-0 earlier on the tour, missing out this time around.

The fortunes of Yousuf and Malik seem to be going in opposite directions

Shoaib Malik’s exclusion for the last Test against England came as no surprise but his exclusion from this limited over squad is slightly more surprising. With Fawad Alam and Mohammed Hafeez coming back in, maybe Malik’s role would have been seen as being covered adequately enough. Hafeez’s inclusion also means that there is no place for Imran Farhat, who strangely enough, is probably more suited to the shorter form.

Most interestingly, Mohammed Yousuf has completed his come back by being named also. One would think that he’d only be used in the ODIs but I for one am certain he could do a job in the Twenty20 see-ball hit-ball form of the game. Younis Khan was overlooked because, according to captain Shahid Afridi, he has not sorted out his dispute with the PCB. In what seems a very unsympathetic and ruthless statement, Afridi said: “I asked the chairman PCB about the situation with Younis twice. But the clearance wasn’t given by the PCB. I did what I had to do”. Make of that what you will.

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With Pakistan’s batting sinking to a new low in the 2nd Test against England, should we abandon this Test batting approach and play like we would in the shorter form, something we are much more comfortable with? There has definitely been some thinking going on in regards to how the Pakistan batsmen were going to go about tackling the swing generated by the English bowlers. It was obvious that their plan this time was to occupy the crease, play defensive and wait for the ball to get old. The plan didn’t work of course. The Duke ball tends to stay newer for longer and once Pakistan began losing early wickets then the plan had effectively been derailed from the off.

Would an ODI batting approach make Pakistan a happier and more productive camp?

From what the Pakistan bowlers have shown, they are clearly capable of restricting England to an ODI total, provided the fielders hold on to the ctaches. And should the Pakistan batsmen set or chase an ODI total themselves – which they are capable of if they go back to what they know – then we may even see a contest between the two sides.

With the backs against the wall, having tried various options, it’s time to fight back with no fear. This does not mean they shoud bat carelessly, but be postive like they are in the shorter form of the game and look to set to a total of 230 to 300, which would give our much suffereing bowlers something to work with. There is simply no point in

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I did mention a while back that this tour would be a defining one for three of our experienced batsmen that did not make the squads, namely Misbah, Yousuf and Younis. Well it seems the discussion about their exclusion will now be re-ignited after the current batting line up failed again, this time against England.

Whilst overhead conditions were favourable to the English bowlers, it was a good track and for the Pakistani top five to make a combined score of just 40, some fault must lie with them. Nasser Hussain said in the break that when he was captain, batsmen did have the tendency to come back with a resigned attitude after being dismissed in swinging conditions, as if to say ‘ Oh well it’s swinging, there was nothing we could do’. Yet he went on to say that that should not be an excuse because that is the true test of the skill of the batsman, whether he can negotiate the movement or not. It’s obvious the skill of our batsmen was lacking.

Whilst there have been some encouraging performances here and there, it has to be said that our batsmen have so far failed on the whole. In the four innings we had against Australia, our highest innings total was just 289. For a Test match that is simply not good enough

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With the Pakistan bowlers getting showered with compliments left right and center – many from those in the know such as Michael Holding and Paul Allott – the England Captain Paul Collingwood has interestingly expressed comments that would not exactly be in agreement with those expressed by the men above.

Confident or plain stupid?

Collingwood was quoted as saying: “I don’t want to go overboard on ‘these guys are the best thing since sliced bread’ – or Wasim Akram, or this, that and the other”, he went on: “I think they have got a lot of talent. But to say they’re the number one bowling attack in the world I would say was over the mark. They have come up in conditions recently where it’s done a fair bit”.

It’s interesting because it comes at around the same time that the Pakistan captain said in an interview to cricinfo that he believes that in Mohammed Aamer and Mohammed Asif, he has the best pace pair in the world. Add Umar Gul to the mix, who as statistics prove, is the best bowler in Twenty20, the form which is harshest on bowlers, then it’s not such a bad pace attack.

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Congratulations to all Stanis for the deserved victory over Australia in the second of the two-match MCC Spirit of Cricket Test series. Having required just 40 runs with 7 wickets in hand, if there was one team that could have lost it from here it was Pakistan, and funnily enough, if there was one team that could have won it from here then it was Australia. Whist Pakistan tried their best to do just that, Australia’s first innings collapse caught up with them and it proved too much of a deficit in the end.

The victorious, young Pakistan squad with their backroom staff enjoy the moment

Though Pakistan did lose the wickets of all their front-line batsmen, it was fitting that it was two bowlers there at the crease scoring the last 5 runs to take Pakistan home. Throughout the two Tests, it was the bowling department that consistently outperformed that of the Australian’s and kept Pakistan in the race.

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