The Very Pakistani

‘History repeats itself’ is a myth!

This one liner is good enough to help my readers understand that I am not trying to create any analogies with 1992 world cup.

This article is my viewpoint of Cricket Pakistan, how I see it and why I don’t think Pakistan is out of the championship race despite such poor start of the tournament.

In cricket, Pakistan has achieved the glory twice; ’92 WC & ’09 T20 WC. We started off miserably in both the tournaments, we were considered the weakest team, nobody could have predicted we would win, on both occasions we were ridiculed, we had selection issues, we had rifts within the dressing room, selectors remained under-fire, we had the poorest fielders, opening problems, praying for other teams to perform well -so it favors Pakistan on net run-rate ground, we were in knock-out position much before the actual knock-out round and the list goes on and on. 

While it doesn’t ensure that we always perform well when such situation occurs, it  is a bit reassuring to know that we are perhaps the only side in the world that can survive, bounce back and win the tournament despite having these many problems.

The performance in the world cup ’15 so far has been ‘Very Pakistani’ for that matter. Certainly, we are not the favorites and our poor form can be analyzed with the single fact that we are expecting a nail-biter even against a team like Ireland. Also, there are possibilities that we might see curtains falling for Pakistan even before round of 8 begins.

On the other hand, you never know that tomorrow’s game might become the turning point for us. We might beat South Africa and we might gain much needed momentum. We might take few good catches and things start working for us. Yasir Shah might get a chance and spins away the Proteas batting line-up.

Those who believe that nothing is right for us and with so many things we cannot put up a good show – they are living in an illusion which I would like to call the ‘illusion of reality’. We are not realists, nor are we idealists, we are freaks. And the reason I say that is we perform the best when the worst is expected from us. Imran Khan in 1992 came up with a title of 'Cornered Tigers' and rightly so.

To win the world cup we don’t need a good chairman of cricket board, we don’t need state of the art first class structure, and we don’t need perfect scripts. If we have to win, we will win despite all the drawbacks.

In 1992 when Pakistan won the world cup we had our issues – probably some of the worst turmoil going within the country. Somehow, the cornered tigers got angry and they started targeting whoever came in their way, the rest is history. 

We were not the number 1 team in 1992 and we never became one even after winning the cup. Because that requires un-tiring efforts, consistency, honesty, good domestic cricket, corruption-free cricket board and so much more.

Winning a world cup is a lot easier than many of us believe. All Pakistan has to do is to somehow get into the quarter-finals and then get lucky in the next three games.

As far as my prediction goes, I don’t see them winning the world cup but they will make it to the final four but with Pakistan you never know!