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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Having found their mojo again, Pakistan must now switch their attention to the form of the game that they’ve underachieved in the most, Test Cricket. We knew we were good at Twenty20, we knew we would give Australia a game, so though we can take some confidence from the 2-0 series win into the Tests, it is important that the players to make the mental and technical switch to the longer form.

The batting concerns were highlighted previously and it was good to see that more batsmen chipped in today although no one went on and accelerated to a 50+ score. The worry is that these batting frailties will be highlighted even more so in the Test matches, with Pakistan, unlike Australia, going in to the Tests with a very similar line-up to their Twenty20 side.

The final word must go to Michael Clarke for the manner in which he held himself together after Aamer collided with him upon his dismissal. It would have been very easy for Clarke to make more of it but he accepted Aamer’s apology and carried on walking. Had it been someone like Watson, or even Tait, who seemed to couple the F-word with every

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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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Strangely, there was a chance that Pakistan, the World Champions, could have been out of the tournament just 24 hours into their defence. But a relatively comfortable win against Bangladesh has erased that fear. Barring an unexpected win for Bangladesh over Australia, Pakistan can now look forward to the super-eight stages of the competition but with a lot of improvements to make.

Though the openers did very well against Bangladesh, they became unstuck against Australia, who look like a force to be reckoned with having got their selection right this time around. Salman Butt played a nice knock in the first game but, and there’s always a but with Salman, he let himself down when it really mattered. It’s fine to do well against Bangladesh but his poor innings against Australia, a game in which Butt-er fingers also dropped catch, has made his Bangladesh innings pretty much insignificant in my eyes. The question mark is still there; will Butt deliver with the bat when it’s really needed? I’ve certainly given up on him ever improving his fielding. I just feel Imran Nazir should be here in his place, as Mohammad Hafeez could quite easily have played the consolidatory role Butt is probably in the line-up for. Added to his batting, Nazir is also one of our best fielders.

Captain Shahid Afridi also needs to step up his game. Not only has his batting and bowling been poor, but so has his captaincy. Clapping the Salman Butt dropped catch is just not good enough. Imran khan would have stared at Butt until he disintegrated into the ground beneath him. These are grown men; there is no place for these niceties. Watch an Australia drop a catch and watch the reaction of the captain and bowler, and you could bet they won’t be clapping their hands.

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Mark Nicholas – Wishes he was Australian

The constant derision and mockery from the Australian team of commentators throughout the Test series that has just finished left me increasingly sensitive and aware of their every comment. In the 79th over of Pakistan’s first innings in the last Test, Salman Butt brought up his century and took off his helmet to do the sajda (prostration). Mark Nicholas, a ‘great friend’ of Pakistan cricket, then uttered something along the lines of:

“There seems to be a break play. Salman Butt is having his moment of worship…[pause]…which he is entitled to of course, but he also seemed to summon a drink or something”.

Now you would have to have listened to it to know exactly what was going on here with his tone of voice and what he was implying. Nicholas, as any keen follower of cricket will know, has a habit of sucking up to the Australians, and here he was at his sycophantic best. In order to try and please his fellow commentators, who were Australian, he thought he’d criticise Salman Butt for stopping play and calling for drinks when Butt was doing nothing of the sort. When Nicholas realised that

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Talk amongst fans may have been regarding the ‘SOS’ sent to Younis Khan but fans tend to forget very easily. Younis has not been in the best of batting form but the manner in which some are going about recalling him, you’d think he was the answer to our problems. That answer, in my opinion, is Shahid Afridi. Younis’ addition to the line up would be right, not because of what he has done but what his replacements haven’t, but Afridi would be the man to make that difference. In the first innings, Australia just strolled along as our bowlers struggled for that elusive break through. That was a situation made for Afridi and his attacking brand of spin.

Shahid Afridi, time to pull out the Test whites

Just imagine that was Afridi bowling to Watson when he was on 99 in the second innings? Now that would have been entertainment and I’m sure Watson would have been heading for the dressing room having left a brown trail behind him. The good thing is that Afridi is close by, currently in Australia playing for the South Australia Redbacks in a twenty20 competition in which he won the man of the match award just yesterday with bowling figures of 4 for 19.

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Something is going on with Pakistan’s catching. Having dropped seven in one Test against New Zealand, here against the Australians, they’ve started where they left off. The first dropped catch, which flew to Umar Akmal, was travelling at pace but should have been grasped at this level. The second, a superb, mesmerizing doosra from Saeed Ajmal to Shane Watson was even easier, dropped by Misbah at slip after taking a touch off the keeper’s gloves.

Catching's not easy when you can't see properly

It is a serious issue and Pakistan are beginning to pay the price for not taking these chances. Though they do have their new fielding and bowling coach Waqar Younis with them, it may have been better to have asked an optician to have accompanied the team to Australia. I think an eyesight test now has to be a must for each player, seriously.

You have to feel for the bowlers. Not only do dropped catches give the batsmen extra chances but they demoralise the bowlers and put the rest of the field under pressure. What a start to 17 year old Aamer’s first Test in Australia it would have been had Akmal held onto that catch? The last team in the world you should be giving opportunities to are the Australians. Katich was on 8* when he was drooped, Watson on 43*, they went on to make 98 and 93 respectively. It would not be too early to suggest that those two drops look to already have cost Pakistan the Test with Australia now in such a commanding position.

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Did anybody notice Brett Lee and Shane Watson with their guitar cases as the Australian team turned up at Birmingham airport for the World Twenty20? Music fans everywhere will be praying that Lee doesn’t release a single whilst he is over here like he did when he was in India for the 2006 Champions Trophy. (WARNING – Music Video is only for the hard of hearing, the visually impaired or Brett Lee fans)

Better still, let’s hope they are custom made cases to carry cricket bats in, designed to ward off bat thieves at the

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