Stani Army

Misbah Ul-Haq - A man the whole of Pakistan should get behind and be proud of

In captain Misbah Ul-Haq, Pakistan now have the kind of man they have long needed to lead them. Described by Geoff Lawson as having “the best cricket brain and intellect in Pakistan cricket”, Misbah should have been playing for and leading his country a very long time ago. Yet what is perplexing is the amount of criticism he has received recently.

Misbah’s calmness in personality is something that is seen in his batting. It’s been a signature of Misbah to start off slow before accelerating, which has resulted in getting Pakistan out of some big holes in the past. Of course, the danger is that if he falls early in such an innings, he is then open to criticism for playing too slow.

Much of his recent criticism stems from such an innings in the World Cup Semi-Final against India where he was not able to go on and take Pakistan to victory. To criticise him so much for one unsuccessful innings is absurd, and indirectly absolves those batsmen who failed not only in that game but throughout the tournament, a tournament in which Misbah finished as Pakistan’s leading scorer.

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Pakistan’s Twenty20 World Cup semi-final loss took Australia’s domination over Pakistan to 12 wins in a row in all formats. Whilst a lot of credit must be given to the Australians for their performance in the semi-final, I disagree with Pakistan Coach Waqar Younis who said “I don’t think we went wrong anywhere. We did a good job, but you’ve just got to give credit to the Australians….I thought we bowled pretty well”. I know that it is our batsmen that usually lose us games and not our bowlers, so we cannot be too critical of them. But some of the bowling in defending 191 in the semi-final was brainless. Even up until the last four overs, just two reasonable overs from four would have made it almost impossible for Australia to come back from and win the game. Yet both Aamer and Ajmal were guilty of bowling the wrong line and far too short. Saeed Ajmal was trusted for the last over as he had done a very good job when Pakistan were in a similar situation in the game against South Africa. Ajmal thought he’d proceed in doing the same thing whilst failing to realise he was bowling to Michael Hussey. Short, and to middle and leg, Hussey just picked him off for sixes. Ajmal should have realised after his first delivery to Hussey that the way to go was full and wide to the off side, but that would have meant thinking for himself.

In general, Pakistan did not deserve to retain the World Cup even if they had squeezed into the semi-finals. Every team had either stayed at the same level from last time or improved, apart from us and maybe India.

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Well that doesn’t quite do this absorbing encounter justice. Even at the half way point Pakistan looked the likely losers after scraping to a total of 205 for 6. With the Australian innings starting off well, Indian fans all over the world who were watching the Pakistan match must have started to turn their TV sets off as Australia cruised to 140 for 2. News must have got through to MS Dhoni in the Indian game who in a strange move, whipped off his wicket keeping gloves and brought himself onto to bowl. Though he did take a wicket, he cost his side boundaries which at the time seemed insignificant. But then came the superb Pakistan fight back and Australia found themselves in trouble at 187 for 8. All of a sudden there was hope for India.

The chief protagonists in the fight back for Pakistan were Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Asif and Rana Naved who bowled maidens in both the 45th and 47th overs of the Australian innings. This meant that not only had the Aussies have to worry about wickets but also the number of balls remaining.

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With an emphatic win over Ireland, Pakistan do not now have to worry about run rates becoming a factor in qualification for the semi-finals.

Batting first, it was a weird kind of innings with Pakistan always threatening to charge but not quite getting away. Credit must go to the Irish bowlers, in particular big Boyd Rankin who gave a measly 11 runs off his four overs.

Kamran Akmal had another brilliant game both with the bat and with the gloves. With his 57 off 51 balls, it was the perfect innings for the batsmen coming in at the other end to have a go. Afridis 24 off just 13 balls was probably the other valuable innings because of his strike rate.

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