dil bolay boom boom

dear cricket fans (faux and genuine alike),

i have been blessed to witness one of the finest one-day innings ever – arguably the greatest match-winning o.d.i. knock by a pakistani batsman: abdul razzaq has just won for pakistan, single-handedly, the second one-day match against south africa.

razzaq is, as i (and many, more articulate men and the occasional woman) have said on numerous occasions, the cleanest striker of a cricket ball. more so than the formidable kay-pee or the high-carbon-steel-wristed m.s. dhoni. more so even than the fearsome chris gayle. but even beyond that, what was impressed upon me most during tonight’s innings was the sheer un-complicated-ness of razzaq’s batting. he just gets on with the job. no fancy footwork. no shuffling. no bobbing or swaying or vacillating between front foot and back.

i have always liked the way razzaq plays his cricket. he is not prone to histrionics and must be one of the calmest cricketer to have ever played for pakistan. i remember how, early in his career, he would show almost no emotion at all. his display of it upon taking a wicket, for example, would be limited to the merest hint of a smile playing around the edge of his mouth for perhaps a second or two; though of late i notice he reacts to a wicket with something approaching conventional emotion. while batting, however, he retains his endearing reticence. which makes him stand out in a nation firmly entrenched in the frenzied end of the emotional scale.


as razzaq hit the winning boundary, i wondered how many pakistani friends and relatives and associates would have been watching the match. my guess is, precious few. i like to think of myself as a true fan of pakistani cricket – sitting through matches won and (of late, so much more often than not) matches lost. these days i hear people say, “aray, kya faida dekhne ka? match to harna hi hai.” so be it, is my response. if i am to call myself a true fan, i have to stick by my team through thick and thin (and these days it’s stretched thinner than japanese mending tissue), even if it means suffering the agony of ignominious defeat.

of course, that doesn’t mean that my team’s dismal performances don’t wind me up. tonight, for instance, i was constantly cursing f.alam’s limp-wristed batting, the huge number of inside edges which narrowly missed the stumps (surely a world record for an odi team-innings – i counted seven. there may have been more, as i missed some of the pak innings while having dinner). i even cursed razzaq’s tentative and blood pressure-raising nudges at balls just outside the off stump (all of which he thankfully failed to connect with).

but in the end, ah... what a heart-warming display of determined, purposeful batting.

to his credit, our national “lala” aka sahibzada mohammed shahid khan afridi generously stated, during the post-match prez, that with batting like this, “razzaq is the real boom boom.”

this performance, and the result does not mean, of course, that the tide has turned. we shall continue, in the foreseeable future, to lose way more matches than we win. professional and/or voluble commentators and journos and pundit-types (self-styled and otherwise) have been suffering painful writer’s cramp jotting down their interpretations of the reasons behind this. cramp away, cramp away (as might be said by hugh-laurie-as-b-w-wooster). i’m just basking in the glow of a typically non-team-performance-win by the pakistani national cricket team.

let’s face it... we are not, as a nation, prone to working collectively towards any goal.

kinkminos out (for the count… it’s past half-past midnight)


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