Category: Sports

The big day is here! Or maybe not. Pakistan vs. India, Asia Cup 2018! Or maybe not. India just pulled off a Pakistan against Hong Kong. So it is Pakistan vs. Pakistan really in a couple of hours. It is also a home team vs. home team match, with India as hosts of this tournament and Pakistan almost home-izing the UAE cricket stadiums over the years. From some(one’s) lens, it is also India A vs. Pakistan A, with the former playing without the Virat Kohli and the latter without many experienced players.

Pakistan and India have faced each other eleven times in Asia Cup. That is eleven times that hospitals have been on high alert to deal with all sorts of emergencies. Pakistan has won five of those matches, as is the case with India. One of the matches was abandoned due to rain (Asia Cup 1997). Today’s match thus promises to be a stats changer, even if not a game changer.

Pakistan has a solid batting, bowling and fielding lineup this time around. This is something you do not get to say about Pakistan too often – not even once in more than 10 years to be precise. Fakhar Zaman and the Babar Azam pose humongous threat to the opposition. They were not up to their standards against Hong Kong, scoring ‘only’ 24 and 33 runs respectively, yet they would be eager to turn their fortunes around – both figuratively and literally, ‘perhaps’ – against India. Hasan Ali and Shadab Khan would be looking forward to ‘torturing’ Indian batsmen. Amir has not been included in the list because he can possibly sit out of the match after failing to perform competitively over the past few (read: many) matches – and because he does not need a specific mention anyway. (Who are we kidding really? Pakistan will only do without Amir if it desires to be magnanimous in compensating India for their self-inflicted wound of Virat’s loss.)

Indian team on the other hand is the strongest unit, on paper at least, in this tournament, and they are expected to bring out their best 11 against Pakistan, unlike what they did against Hong Kong. They are without Kohli for sure, but they are without Sachin Tendulkar too, and that is probably a bigger loss if you really think about it. Sachin has scored more runs (971) vs Pakistan than Kohli (613) in Asia Cup – no surprises there. Moreover, *dhol rolls* Sachin has taken more wickets (17) vs Pakistan in Asia Cup than any other player in the current Indian team – many surprises there. Indian batting lineup comprises a triple double centurion, the Captain Cool, and ODI’s top bowler (the Jasprit Bumrah). In fact, India’s bowling lineup contains four (Bumrah, Yadav, Chahal and Patel) of the top 15 bowlers in the format, compared to only one (Hasan Ali) for Pakistan. It appears as if India’s known weakness, its bowling unit, is far superior than Pakistan’s known strength, its bowling unit, and that today’s result would thus be a no-brainer. “Appears”. That’s exactly where we go 180 degrees wrong. One hundred and eighty! Degrees wrong.

Time for the predictions now: Pakistan for the win! Why? Because everything one thinks is not going to happen in a Pak vs Ind match, ends up happening at the Pak vs Ind match (invoking subjective probability rather than the frequentist one really… and you can ignore what I just wrote). A close match expected albeit not a very high scoring one, with team batting first accumulating less than 300 runs.

The big day is here! Or maybe not.

20 June 2018. Pakistan vs Zimbabwe. 4^th ODI. 37^th over. 5^th ball. Fakhar Zaman gets down for a slog-sweep-looking top-edge that somehow ends up as a six – like it always does *“India, are you reading” banners pop up*. And with it he brings up his 150. And with it his ODI series average crosses Zimbabwe’s total run count of 368 in the series so far. Comparing an individual’s average with a team’s cumulative total is a big no-no for English – faulty comparison fallacy if anyone’s interested – but Fakhar hasn’t been nice to English in the past anyway (ref. CT semi-final). Such is the brilliance of this brave, brutal batsman whom we know as Fakhar Zaman.

Fakhar was born in 1990 in Mardan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He grew up watching and playing and loving cricket. While he was always exceptionally well at the game and would have liked to pursue it professionally, he was dragooned by his father into joining the Pakistan Navy in 2007. After all, in accordance with our social norms, could Fakhar Zaman have continued being Zaman’s fakhar (pride) with a ‘substandard career choice’?

Becoming a professional cricketer was Fakhar’s dream, one that you see with eyes open, and the good thing about dreams this type is that you don’t forget them the other day – or even the other half a decade as in his case. In 2013, Fakhar finally, and thankfully, decided to advance from his naval career in pursuit of his childhood dream, and began appearing for multiple regional outfits including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Abbottabad Falcons. Journey from here wasn’t easy yet it was certainly worth it. After performing reasonably well in Pakistan’s thankless circuit, averaging 49 in List A, for over five years, Fakhar made his ODI debut on one of the grandest of stages, the 2017 Champions Trophy. There was no looking back after that.

With an average of 63 and strike rate over 110, Fakhar single handedly turned Pakistan’s batting fortunes in the Champions Trophy. He was bound to gain the world’s attention with his impressive knocks in the tournament but not many expected him to live up to the newly formed expectations, considering his unorthodox, maybe also luck dependent, technique. And they were right. Fakhar did not live up to those expectations; he surpassed them!

After big scores against mighty England and India in Champions Trophy, he gave remarkable performances, including an unbeaten 82, in New Zealand too, in an otherwise abysmal show from Pakistan which saw them being whitewashed 5-0. The on-going Zimbabwe series was the cherry on the cake – a two-pound cherry on a one-pound cake. The series was always expected to be uncompetitive, especially with some of Zimbabwe’s top players opting out, but no one expected it to be as ‘catastrophic’ as it has turned out to be. Zimbabwe Cricket’s invite to PCB for the on-going series is now being rumored of having a paragraph dedicated to Fakhar Zaman, asking him to come and shatter some long-held records. Fakhar has already managed to enter the elite double centurion club in just 17 innings, more than 400 innings earlier than the club’s founding member, the Sachin Tendulkar. He is also set to break Sir Viv Richards record of being fastest to 1000 runs, after more than 40 years. He only needs 20 runs in 3 innings for the feat, which, with his current form, should be a walk in the park – on a hoverboard, with turbo installed.

Fakhar is to 4s what Afridi was to 6s. He replicates Afridi’s boundary hitting ability and is yet substantially more consistent. He is fearless, and in control while not looking in control at all. Many batsmen slow down as they come close to achieving milestones like multiples of 50. Yet Fakhar was yesterday seen getting all those multiples – and there were four them – with 4s and 6s. His sincerity to the game and hard work is beyond question, and his composure during pressure situations sufficient to single handedly cause opposition to concede defeat.

What’s rather strange, and fortunate, is that Fakhar rose to fame just immediately after Pakistan, due to unfortunate events, lost its another key opener, who looked just as dangerous to the books of cricket records. As the nation grieved the loss of an apparently irreplaceable talent at his red-hot form, Fakhar Zaman emerged with a form even redder, and even hotter. A team that had collectively failed to play out 50 overs in the recent past, found an opener in Fakhar Zaman who could achieve the feat on his own. “Pakistan Cricket at its best. One minute down, next minute up.”

With his recent performances and records, he already appears to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the giants of the game. However, is he really that great yet? Certainly not. Can he become that great ever? We will have to wait and see. Do you know which Pakistani holds the record for the joint second fastest to 1000 runs? Azhar Ali! And he never made it to the 2000 runs mark. After 50-odd innings, he failed to even find a place in the ODI team. Fakhar certainly deserves to be lauded for his double century but does it come even close to Tendulkar’s unbeaten 200 eight years back against a bowling attack comprising the likes of Dale Steyn?

What we can say right now is that Fakhar Zaman is a highly promising prospect and one hell of an entertainment – only hell if you are the opposition team’s supporter – to watch on his day. While many still fail to understand how he manages to get those big scores, it doesn’t take anything away from his brilliance. It’s his natural game; even if it’s wrong yet it works, it’s probably right. Indubitably, luck has been on his side too. However, while luck alone may take you to the famous (or infamous, depending on where you come from) Final, it takes much more to display a MoM winning performance on that day (like perhaps ‘assistance’ from world’s number one ODI bowler as of 21 July 2018’s rankings).

Will Fakhar get another century against Zimbabwe tomorrow? Will he continue to deliver just as well against South Africa and England? Can he do on 16 June 2019 in UK (Ind vs Pak WC match) what he did on 18 of the same month in the same country in 2017? Too many questions, too few answers.

Sweden vs England:

The Samara Arena prepares to host the third World Cup 2018 quarter final between Sweden and England at 7 pm (PST) today. From not being able to qualify for the last world cup to making it to the last eight this year; that too without their talisman Zlatan Ibrahimovich; Sweden has been a team to look out for. Similarly, it is after an absence of twelve years that England have reached this stage of the competition, and they are three games away from the World Cup glory that they last celebrated in 1996.

Russia vs Croatia

It’s day 24 in Russia and the last quarter final match kicks off at Sochi’s Fisht Olympic Stadium. Football fans across the world are eagerly waiting for 11 pm (PST) to find out whether Russia will give yet again another surprising performance or will Croatia break the winning tradition of host nations at the World Cup.

ROAD TO QUARTER FINALS:

The World Cup was quite memorable for a lot of us, apart from being the first final for Croatia, it had the most penalties of any world cup, and including that wonderful strike by Pavard which won the Best Goal Award, there were some absolute bangers in there. Germany however was among those who would look back at the tournament as a dark time. With their worst performance in nearly 80 years, the 2014 world cup champions couldn’t even go past the group stage. Criticism came from many in Germany and the football world, but perhaps it was Mesut Ozil who received the most backlash, so much so that he recently retired from international football.

The 5 time German Player of the Year was under media scrutiny for quite some time now. This was because of his picture with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his delay in “explaining” this action to the German media. Although, Ozil asserted that there was no political intent behind the picture, perhaps he got between the crossfire of bad relations between the two countries. The German government views its Turkish counterparts as antidemocratic while Turkey accuses Germany of harboring anti-Turkey terrorists. It was only in February of 2018 after all that Turkey released Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist accused of spreading anti-state propaganda, after pressure from Berlin. Thus, many Germans wanted Ozil to vindicate his German-ness perhaps.

But perhaps, there was an element of racism here too. Ozil claimed that he was German when the team lost and an immigrant when they lost. He also holds that he has been singled out when it comes to criticism despite poor performances from usual stars across the team such as Thomas Muller, Sami Khedira, and Joshua Kimmich. This isn’t something new in football, Ozil’s thoughts resonate with footballers such as Karim Benzema and Romelu Lukaku who felt they were French and Belgian when their team won but immigrants whenever they lost. Of course Ozil certainly was not ostracized by everyone involved in German football, Manager Joachim Low supported him and he also had sympathetic ears in the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At the same time, however, the German Football President Reinhard Grindel and Public Relations Manager Oliver Bierhoff criticized Ozil’s inclusion in the team. This criticism perhaps was misplaced because their reasoning started from the controversial picture and ended on his performances which is exactly the problem Ozil claims he faced: being German when the team wins and non-German when it loses.

It should be noticed that Ozil was not the only player involved in the picture, Manchester City player Ilkay Gundogan was also pictured. However, where Gundogan did give explanations, Ozil kept his silence on the matter, that is, until he gave an explanation in his retirement statement that he did not want to be targeted by the media in an immediate press conference and instead consulted with the German President and Reinhard Grindel and planned on releasing a joint statement with the German Football Association. Ozil’s postion was also different from Gundogan’s because Ozil has a much larger role in the national team than Gundogan so would have attracted more attention. Furthermore, as Ozil clarified in his recent statement, he wanted to stay true to his roots and pay his respects to the highest position in Turkish government rather than to give in to the trend of sour relations between the two countries. Therefore, the picture was never meant to have political meanings. Grindel’s public insistence on a statement from Ozil despite Ozil’s understanding with the Football Association, therefore, angered him. But, it was not this alone which contributed to Ozil’s decision. He had been subjected to abuse from fans as well as people in positions of power. The exact abuses, regretfully, cannot be published in this article. Not only this, but he had also received hate mail and phone calls to him and his family. Ozil’s father had said that he would have retired if he were in Ozil’s place, however Ozil still waited on making a decision. Seeing little support, however, maybe it should not come as a surprise to us that Ozil retired the way he did only at the age of 29.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs that racism and bad international relations permeate into the beautiful game of football. Although, the situation has improved, with fines being a usual punishment for racism between players, but there is no mechanism to protect players from racism and politics which transcend beyond just two players. Perhaps not in 2018, but it is hoped that we learn from this incident and prevent such instances in the future.