Why Pakistan cricket retains a breath of something gloriously pure and sporting

[fatman17]

Sportblog
Why Pakistan cricket retains a breath of something gloriously pure and sporting

Barney Ronay
Pakistan won 2-0 with players who are from the same streets and fields as those who watch and follow them, which is the exact opposite of England
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/nov/06/pakistan-series-win-good-thing-england#img-1
‘They are in a sense a kind of anti-England, a nation that has everything – talent, charisma, a vibrant public sporting life – except money and influence.’ Illustration: Cameron Law for the Guardian
Contact author

@barneyronay


Friday 6 November 2015 14.36 GMT Last modified on Friday 6 November 2015 22.00 GMT

There was something particularly striking, and indeed particularly beautiful, about the moment it became clear, beyond even the bounds of sallow, sleepless, toast-crumbed, pyjama-clad, mid-morning existential delusion, that England’s cricketers were going to lose the final Test against Pakistan in Sharjah.

Ten minutes into the fifth day’s play Yasir Shah trapped Joe Root lbw playing back to his fourth ball of the day and England’s faint hopes of chasing down an unlikely target duly evaporated. It wasn’t so much the ball itself that stood out, a weird, skiddy full-pitched leg-break that rapped Root on the ankle as he jabbed his bat down, bent double in that familiar attitude of betrayal by the grubber, the look of a batsman who strode to the crease expecting a handshake and found himself kneed in the guts instead.

It wasn’t just the pedigree of those involved either: the world’s most brilliantly alluring overgrown cartoon mouse of a leg-spin bowler getting one through the No1-ranked batsman. It wasn’t even the reaction of the bowler who, like a few of Pakistan’s best cricketers, seems to spend quite a lot of time fighting back the urge to burst into laughter, whose cricket is essentially humorous in nature, a matter of misdirection and stump-shattering punchlines. Even the wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed’s huge grinning appeal was basically a round of applause for an excellent, if slightly accidental piece of comedic timing.

Really, though, the best thing about Yasir’s dismissal of Root was the realisation that to refuse to celebrate it, to maintain that there was any level on which this was not a wonderful thing, would be absurd.
This wasn’t just a fine individual duel, but a moment of international sport in its pure form, a genuine clash of systems: on one side England, surely one of the most expensively micromanaged teams in cricket history; at the other the roving pirate ship, the unstyled outsider that is Pakistan cricket.

Root is a wonderful, lively player. But he is also arguably the most carefully groomed international cricketer England has ever produced, a batsman whose every significant innings from junior levels up is stored within the ECB digital archive, whose personal and technical qualities have been refined at every age level, a pure talent that has flowered from within a fiercely contained environment.

Yasir is a wilder flower, a boy who took up bowling aged 10 after seeing Shane Warne on TV and remains largely self-taught, a product of cousins and club and scratch cricket. He grew up in the beautiful but troubled north-west, a place of Taliban atrocities and military tension that has nonetheless become something of a centre for Pakistan domestic cricket in recent times. Yasir plays for Abbottabad, which you might also remember as the place Osama bin Laden was killed by US navy seals a few years back.

Meanwhile in a wider sense Pakistan remain more than ever cricket’s own uppity, brilliant, flawed outsiders, a nation that has fallen out with the governing nations pretty much from the moment it was called into being. Exiled, underpaid, excluded in any kind of cricket-against-the-enemy narrative, Pakistan emerge as underdogs. They are in a sense a kind of anti-England, a nation that has everything – talent, charisma, a vibrant public sporting life – except money and influence.

 

[BDforever]

Sportblog
Why Pakistan cricket retains a breath of something gloriously pure and sporting

Barney Ronay
Pakistan won 2-0 with players who are from the same streets and fields as those who watch and follow them, which is the exact opposite of England
‘They are in a sense a kind of anti-England, a nation that has everything – talent, charisma, a vibrant public sporting life – except money and influence.’ Illustration: Cameron Law for the Guardian
Contact author

@barneyronay


Friday 6 November 2015 14.36 GMT Last modified on Friday 6 November 2015 22.00 GMT
There was something particularly striking, and indeed particularly beautiful, about the moment it became clear, beyond even the bounds of sallow, sleepless, toast-crumbed, pyjama-clad, mid-morning existential delusion, that England’s cricketers were going to lose the final Test against Pakistan in Sharjah.

Ten minutes into the fifth day’s play Yasir Shah trapped Joe Root lbw playing back to his fourth ball of the day and England’s faint hopes of chasing down an unlikely target duly evaporated. It wasn’t so much the ball itself that stood out, a weird, skiddy full-pitched leg-break that rapped Root on the ankle as he jabbed his bat down, bent double in that familiar attitude of betrayal by the grubber, the look of a batsman who strode to the crease expecting a handshake and found himself kneed in the guts instead.

It wasn’t just the pedigree of those involved either: the world’s most brilliantly alluring overgrown cartoon mouse of a leg-spin bowler getting one through the No1-ranked batsman. It wasn’t even the reaction of the bowler who, like a few of Pakistan’s best cricketers, seems to spend quite a lot of time fighting back the urge to burst into laughter, whose cricket is essentially humorous in nature, a matter of misdirection and stump-shattering punchlines. Even the wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed’s huge grinning appeal was basically a round of applause for an excellent, if slightly accidental piece of comedic timing.

Really, though, the best thing about Yasir’s dismissal of Root was the realisation that to refuse to celebrate it, to maintain that there was any level on which this was not a wonderful thing, would be absurd.
This wasn’t just a fine individual duel, but a moment of international sport in its pure form, a genuine clash of systems: on one side England, surely one of the most expensively micromanaged teams in cricket history; at the other the roving pirate ship, the unstyled outsider that is Pakistan cricket.

Root is a wonderful, lively player. But he is also arguably the most carefully groomed international cricketer England has ever produced, a batsman whose every significant innings from junior levels up is stored within the ECB digital archive, whose personal and technical qualities have been refined at every age level, a pure talent that has flowered from within a fiercely contained environment.

Yasir is a wilder flower, a boy who took up bowling aged 10 after seeing Shane Warne on TV and remains largely self-taught, a product of cousins and club and scratch cricket. He grew up in the beautiful but troubled north-west, a place of Taliban atrocities and military tension that has nonetheless become something of a centre for Pakistan domestic cricket in recent times. Yasir plays for Abbottabad, which you might also remember as the place Osama bin Laden was killed by US navy seals a few years back.

Meanwhile in a wider sense Pakistan remain more than ever cricket’s own uppity, brilliant, flawed outsiders, a nation that has fallen out with the governing nations pretty much from the moment it was called into being. Exiled, underpaid, excluded in any kind of cricket-against-the-enemy narrative, Pakistan emerge as underdogs. They are in a sense a kind of anti-England, a nation that has everything – talent, charisma, a vibrant public sporting life – except money and influence.

Pakistan has really become unstoppable test side.
Pakistan always has excellent bowling attack, what new thing is, Pakistan also now has great batting lineup, in the past Pakistan relied on 1-2 great batsman.