Stani Army

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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…League. Sorry for getting you all excited there for minute, but what I really meant was that Maz at Boom Boom Korner has set up a simple fantasy cricket league with cricketweb.net for the Twenty20 World Cup and you’re free to join. In fact, if you don’t join, I will charge you.

It’s really simple. Sign up HERE (just password, user-name and email etc), and pick your players from a list (make sure you have a quick look at the simple scoring system before hand). Once you have selected your team, go to the left-hand side red panel and select ‘user comp join’, from the second drop down menu select ‘Maza786 T20 Fantasy 201 (ICC World Twenty20 2010)’. Done!

You only have a couple of days before the start of the World Cup so do it now! It will take you 10 minutes. If I did it, you can! “Don’t be so hard on yourself”, I hear you say…you did say that didn’t you? Say it! So hurry along, it’ll be nice to get everyone together.

I’m not sure many of you have read Samir Chopra’s latest article on Cricinfo’s Different Strokes blog, but it is simply outrageous. Filled with sarcasm, insult, hatred, ignorance and a bit of jealousy, Chopra gives us his views on the recent banning and fining of Pakistan players by the PCB. He starts of questioning whether any of what has gone on is “even mildly interesting?”, but seems to ignore the obvious that it was interesting enough for him to write about it.

It was Aldous Huxley that once said “The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge” and it is evident from the article that Chopra gained great pleasure in telling us what he ‘knows’ about Pakistan cricket. Certainly, from his photo on Cricinfo, it is clear he is someone quite fond of himself generally. Having taken exception to his piece, I decided to write the following as a comment: “A shameful article by someone who quite clearly has a chip on his shoulder. How long have you kept that pent up inside you?”. Who thinks my comment was allowed through? Wrong, it wasn’t, but can anyone tell me why?

Here’s a taste of his work:
“There is a way of describing Pakistani cricket, which used to be tiresome but which has now started to strike me as patently offensive. This is the insistence that Pakistani cricket is charmingly erratic, wonderfully unpredictable, beautifully inconsistent, sublimely indisciplined. Right, I’m making these up. But you see the pattern. Pair a couple of adjectives which span the spectrum from the sublime to the sordid and have a go at describing Pakistani cricket. And I suspect the world of Pakistani cricket revels in this description, because this sort of indulgent tolerance gives it a free pass.”

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The stupidity of Shahid Afridi’s actions was profound, there is no question. As if the two whitewashes hadn’t caused us fans enough embarrassment, Afridi had to compound it by taking a bite out of the ball with as much subtlety as that spectator’s tackle on Khalid Latif. By the way, everyone’s talking about security in Pakistan, what happened here Cricket Australia?

Captains take a bite. Maybe there was something wrong with the Australian food?

Afridi was being touted for captain in the Test and ODI formats and I would not have minded. He made a good case with his recent performances and showed signs of maturity but his actions here have got me wondering if he really has matured. Yes, every team probably does it Shahid, but I doubt they use their teeth and make it so blatantly obvious. He may as well have gone up to umpire Asoka De Silva and asked to use his dentures. And when quizzed on Pakistani television

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So, Pakistan stumble over the line against a second string West Indies eleven but maybe this was a good thing. A completely resounding victory may have seen them going into the remaining games with a sense of over confidence which can’t have been a good thing.

When the match began and the West Indian batsmen capitulated, I was beginning to question what the West Indians were doing there and whether it would have been more worthwhile, for a top 8 tournament, for Bangladesh to have been included instead. Yet the West Indian fight back with the ball was encouraging even if the Bangladeshi players may feel they probably deserve to be at the Champions Trophy. Maybe the ICC could have told the West Indies board that if their contract dispute was not resolved in time, the Bangladesh team would go to South Africa instead. Let’s just hope the Windies carry on holding their own in the next two games at least.

As for Pakistan, the two stars of the show were teenagers, Mohammed Aamer and Umar Akmal. Aamer continues to impress after a successful T20 World Cup and Umar has just burst on the international scene and looks at home already. His innings today prevented a possible embarrassment. Being a usually attacking batsman, with a ODI strike rate above 100, he assessed the situation and played an intelligent innings along with Afridi to carry Pakistan over the finishing line. When Afridi was asked what he liked about him he said, “I love brave heart people and he is brave”. Watch out for him and Mohammed Aamer, 19 and 17 years old respectively, in the rest of the tournament, the latest fresh off the unmatched Pakistan cricket production line.

For Pakistan to win the tournament the batsmen need to perform but with arguably the best bowling attack in the world, we’re always in with a chance.  India are up next yet have been dealt a major blow with Yuvraj out of the tournament with a broken finger. This I think will have a major effect on what was deemed to be India’s strongest part of the game, their batting. The three others in the group, Pakistan, West Indies and Australia, will see this as a boost.

It was said to be the more difficult group and so it proved as the current holders India went out of the tournament. It was sad in a way as the favourites, and rightly so, did not manage to quite galvanise themselves when it mattered after two easy pre-tournament games. The loss of the brilliant Sehwag and talk of unrest behind the scenes can’t have helped.

There’ll be lots of ifs, buts and maybes from the Indians; would India have did it had Yuvraj stopped the 5 byes in Harbajan’s last over? Yuvraj himself would say that he made up for that with a ridiculously good first ball 6. Then there’s Jadeja who faced 3 overs of dots. Many said that he played too slow yet he will argue that he got two important wickets including that of Pietersen’s and took an important catch.

It was clear what Pietersen and Collingwood felt fired the English up and that was the booing their team got at the beginning of the game. It was a strange thing to have occurred

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