A bitter goodbye to Pakistan’s 2011 World Cup campaign

Before the tournament I had said that I would be happy if Pakistan made it to the semifinal. That within the context – 4 years of turmoil, the loss of our first-choice opening bowlers, the waning pace and broken down body of Shoaib Akhtar, the inexperience of Shahzad, Shafiq, Akmal (the younger), Riaz and Junaid, the nascent captaincy of Afridi and the presence of Calamity Akmal – a semifinal appearance would be a great achievement. Anything beyond that would be garaybee (gravy; bonus).
 

Perhaps in a few days that rational, pre-tournament fan in me will reappear. Right now it’s only been a day since a 29 run defeat to India in a world cup semifinal and it still stings like hell. Only two things could be worse: if we had lost to them in the final and if they go on and win this thing. I am a Sri Lankan on Saturday.

With a bitter mixture of anger, depression, despondence, embarrassment, exhaustion and sorrow brewing up inside of me, I want to say to all the doe eyed, know-nothing-about-cricket-sudden-experts-around-worldcup-time fans: take your “we fought valiantly”, “it’s just a game, afterall” and “Misbah played bravely till the end” perkiness and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

We lost a game we could have won comfortably yesterday. We were so close. Here is the best analysis of the game in one short paragraph:

“Their two most experienced batsmen, Younus and Misbah, showed that in limited-overs cricket there can be a fine line between “wise old heads” and “doddery old codgers”, combining in a pensionable display of peak-time passivity that harvested just 24 runs from the first 65 balls they faced. This ratcheted up the pressure on their younger team-mates Shafiq and Umar Akmal, who promptly perished trying to force the pace.”

And Andy Zalzman is a comedian. Not an experienced cricket journalist, like Osman Samiuddin, who wrote this claptrap:

“Blaming the batting in any case misses the point. Pakistan are never comfortable chasers and 261, in a World Cup semi-final, at the home of the opposition is an entirely different kind of 261 from the ones they might chase down in a bilateral series in the UAE. The point is, they shouldn’t have been chasing that much in the first place.”

Sorry, Osman, but you and Afridi called this one wrong. Despite Sehwag’s onslaught, despite Gul’s day of horror, despite 3 dropped catches of Sachin (which is a little harsh on Kamran Akmal) we had restricted India to 260 and were 70-2 in the 16th over when Younus Khan walked in. You CAN drop the greatest batsman in the world 3 times and still win. If only our two most experienced batsmen could have kept their heads.

The blame (and blaming is what I’m doing here) lies squarely on the shoulders of Younus Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq. Sure, hafeez played a rash shot to get out. At least he was trying to score runs. Between them Younus and Misbah sucked the life out of Pakistan’s run chase; choking it one painful dot-ball at a time. They have a lot of apologizing to do. It’s true that they dropped Tendulkar (once each) along with Umar Akmal and that prevented a possible Indian collapse. But the apology they owe is for their batting.

They owe an apology to Hafeez, Ajmal and Afridi for wasting their wonderful bowling (30-0-123-3). They owe an apology to Wahab Riaz for wasting the greatest bowling performance of his young career (10-0-46-5), which happen to be the best bowling figures by a Pakistani against India at a world cup. They owe an apology to Shafiq and Umar for not sharing those young men’s urgency at the wicket, for every tight 2 that they turned into a comfortable 1, for every single they took on the 5th ball of an over after playing 4 pre-meditated defensives shots.

Damn you, Younus and Misbah! Damn you!