Imran, Wasim will help but Pak face pressure of home crowd

A camel is a horse designed by committee. The tour itinerary has a committee look, an attempt has been made to accommodate all views, leavin...

A camel is a horse designed by committee. The tour itinerary has a committee look, an attempt has been made to accommodate all views, leaving everyone a little dissatisfied but ultimately happy that the tour was not scuttled. The greater good prevailed.

Ehsan Mani, the chairman of ICC and I speak on the telephone occasionally and I called him to ask him about the role the ICC had played in the bridge-building. Much of what he told me was off the record but while the PCB and BCCI are congratulating themselves and each other, the ICC was active behind the scene and used its clout for some gentle arm-twisting.

Ehsan Mani seemed pleased. The ICC too should get some credit. Jagmohan Dalmiya too has been chairman of ICC and between him and Ehsan Mani have been instrumental in getting the voice of subcontinent cricket heard.

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It was during Dalmiya’s tenure that Bangladesh was given test status. Though Bangladesh has yet to win a test match or anything else, it did put one more subcontinent country on the cricket map.

The itinerary has put the ODIs first, to be followed by Test matches. This is a political decision and has had to do with the elections in India — Dalmiya all but admitted this in his press-conference.

Fair enough but it has put Pakistan’s planning out of kilter. A list of 22 probables had been drawn up for a training camp but this for the Test matches. Now the list has been hastily amended, some players dropped and some added, including Shahid Afridi, who seems to be pigeon-holed as a one-day player though he has a Test hundred and that too against India at Chennai in 1999.

Wasim Bari, the chairman of the selection committee has had to take off his Test cap and put on the white, floppy hat of one-day cricket.

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There is the danger too that by playing the ODIs first, the Tests may be devalued. This is a personal opinion but for me Test matches are the real thing and one-day cricket too much of a tamasha. As I told a seminar in Kolkata some years ago, if a cow is born in a stable, it does not become a horse; I had compared Test cricket to a ballet and the other version to belly-dancing. A personal view, as I have said, before I am pelted with rotten eggs.

Pakistan is calling up its big guns for the training camp. Imran Khan will spend a day with the players and will talk with them and, hopefully, motivate them, generally rally them.

He will tell them not to be overawed by the occasion nor overwhelmed by the pressure. Next week Wasim Akram will do some work with the fast bowlers, educating them on the virtues of bowling to a plan, line and length and when to, and when not to, bowl bouncers, passing on his rich experience made richer by the fact that he was in Australia doing the commentary when India was there and should be up to date with the Indian team.

All this will be helpful but, in the end, it is the players who must help themselves. It is their temperament that will be tested. Playing in front of their home crowds can be pretty unnerving and these will be no ordinary crowds. They will be charged up and there will be an overflow of emotions.

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Cricket crowds in Pakistan, and presumably in India as well, tend to be fickle. Adulation can quickly turn to abuse. It’s going to be a very tough series for both teams and the itinerary is tight. It will be no mean feat to remain focused and will call for a special brand of mental toughness apart from supreme physical fitness. Neither team can afford to have its key players go lame.

And for Pakistan, this will apply most of all to Shoaib Akhtar, who will be the standard-bearer of Pakistan’s pace attack.