No third man
Imran Khan and Javed Miandad started out as polar opposites but then settled into a marriage of convenience where each understood the other, perhaps better than others around them
Saad Shafqat
August 17, 2010
They were matched, yet mismatched; cozy allies, yet bitter rivals; bound by a common vision and purpose, yet also pushed apart by their backgrounds and polarised temperaments. At some point during their contemporaneous careers for Pakistan,
Imran Khan and
Javed Miandad grasped the prisoner's dilemma that circumstances had thrust upon them. Somehow they saw through the fog of bitterness and understood that they were better off collaborating than fighting. In the process, enough magic was unleashed to launch a golden age.
Much has been made of the Lahore-Karachi rivalry as the basis for the tensions between Imran and Miandad, but it probably had more to do with the taboo subject of social class. Both were burdened by it in their own way - one by having less, the other by having more. Approaching each other warily, they communicated the natural reactions of their ilk, and the resentments built up. Class may be a sensitive and uncomfortable topic, but it is one to which cricket - a sport that once distinguished between gentlemen and players - is hardly alien.
The general view of
Miandad conjuring up tactics and
Imran barking the commands and motivating the troops is largely correct. There have been matches - the
Bangalore Test from 1987 is perhaps the best example -
when they were practically co-captains. By the late 1980s these two were essentially a team within the team.
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