May the force be with you

Call for Change · #1 Thursday, April 14, 2011

May the force be with you
Shahid Saeed pays tribute to the one-man spectacle that was Shoaib Akhtar

was around nine years old when a company called “Crown Collectibles” started a cricket trading card series in Pakistan. It had a book with pages for each country’s cricket team and others for Pakistan’s legends. I bought, collected and traded cards for two of these scrapbooks. Two pages in the book were dedicated to the bright, young and upcoming stars of Pakistani cricket: Naveed Latif, Hasan Raza and Saleem Elahi featured prominently here but so did another person with an unknown name, someone whose card landed in my possession very early on. Wearing a sky-blue uniform (or so I recall), a young lad named Shoaib Akhtar was photographed from the deep forward, at the peak of his jump in the bowling action. I vividly remember the jump, which was reaching the top of the wickets, furious and energetic.

For that pace and fury he would become famous: for his toe-crushing yorkers, blindingly fast bouncers and majestic post-wicket celebrations, as well as his off-the-ground antics. Shoaib Akhtar would go on to enchant the world for over a decade. He would fall out with chairmen, captains and team members, make comeback after comeback; and when he made his final comeback he was more mature than ever, wiser in the upper chamber too. He used his pace selectively, the slower bowler viciously but more often, and utilized the bouncer effectively. The permanent limp, as painful as it was to watch for a fan, was a reminder of the passion with which he was playing his game.

Shoaib Akhtar has been called a selfish player, someone who does not play for the team. The public perception is that of a wild playboy who carelessly trashed his career, a drug abuser who couldn’t get along with his team-mates. But nobody has ever claimed that Akhtar sold the game or his country for money. His teammates fixed matches, bowled no balls for money and took oaths on the holy book not to play under Younus Khan – an angel of a man and a gem of a cricketer – but Akhtar wore his national stripes proudly unlike anyone else on the ground. He did not sell his flag and anthem, he did not pursue vendettas against players and he did not become part of mutinies within the team. The Tableeghi Jamaat prayer party of Inzamam ul Haq made a social outcast out of Shoaib, isolated him and demonized him in front of the media, was composed of numerous people who would be charged with throwing matches at various stages – not to mention Inzamam himself, part of the group that fixed matches in the late ‘90s. Nepotism, lethargy and an off-putting show of piousness marred Pakistani cricket in those years. Newer un-contracted players called to training camps were asked to go on tableeghi trips to get into Inzi’s good books. It became a requirement, something you had to endure in order to get selected. Many players known for being party boys and ladies men off the ground could now be found travelling on sehrozas with the jamaat. Hypocrisy had reached levels perhaps never before seen on a cricket ground, if not in the playground that was the setting of Pakistan’s political charades.

Wasim Akram often narrates how Imran Khan would judiciously monitor his diet to make sure he did not harm his fitness, and once even lightly beat him up after he had been caught smuggling junk food into his hotel room. Anecdotal evidence tells us of how the pavilion under Inzamam would serve nihari, paye and other fatty yet delicious food, even though it is bad for athletes. (You don’t have to be a doctor to know this.) Inzamam was not a demon, but he was not a uniting captain either. We won matches during his reign but we lost a team.

And then we had a PCB Chairman who blamed long hair for extra wides bowled during a match and ordered haircuts like it was the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. Followed by another one of the tinpot’s appointees, a nephrologist who managed a dubious, money-eating social welfare commission at the same time. In between all this, Shoaib Akhtar was dying a slow death – his fitness was terrible, his attitude unacceptable and his passion for the game deteriorating. Chairman, captain or coach – nobody was able to rescue his talent.

Fast bowlers are unique and sensitive creatures. They may get injured if they try to pick a catch in their follow through. They burn sweat like nobody else. They are furious crowd-pullers and often flamboyant. Charisma, a sense of style, exuberance and perhaps even some arrogance, combined with a passion for dominance, these are good for fast bowlers. Long hair only adds to the list of things that make them riveting. Few are like Umar Gul, calm and composed and guarding their private lives, not to have anything to say off the ground. Akhtar was at the top of the fast bowling crowd, and like others before him, and many to follow, needed extra care to keep him in shape. The coach and the captain need to treat fast bowlers, Akhtar-types especially, like children. Scolding and punishment can often work but love is the best solution. Here, however, an isolated, shunned and demonized Akhtar was pushed to the cliff. And even then, instead of losing his passion in these years of forgetfulness – when he should have been at his peak – he still delivered performances that no fan can ever forget. (I am thinking of Lahore ’02, Brisbane ’02, Wellington ’03, Colombo ‘03.)

Later he became a disciplined and observant team-mate. Afridi hit the right cord with him and both worked well to establish a relationship that delivered for the team. As the World Cup drew near, Akhtar’s emotions and his desire to deliver a last memorable performance were visible through each and every interview, every statement to the media and every appearance on the ground. He proved his commitment with extra time in the gym and he abided by team discipline as well as anybody else. It was as if he were suddenly a different man. While the prospect of a last series, the culmination of a career and completion of a lifetime innings did play a large part in this apparent change of personality, it also proved that a good working relationship with the coach and the captain brought out the best in Akhtar. What could have happened, had this change occurred in 2003? How would Shoaib Akhtar have fared as a test bowler? These are some of the biggest ifs and buts of Pakistani cricket.

In a short interview he gave to the BBC after the match with Sri Lanka in this World Cup, Akhtar was asked to name the greatest batsmen in the world. He replied, “Brian Lara and Inzamam.” That in essence is what made Shoaib Akhtar great. He held no grudge, not even an iota of animosity towards the captain who had so much to do with his downfall. Reciprocity of such feelings is something we cannot expect from the other gentleman – the episode with the oath on the holy book being a reminder. In truth, all but a few were unfair to Shoaib Akhtar. The world and his spectators too. We wanted pace, we wanted the speed barrier, we wanted off-field gossip and we wanted a monster of a person and a behemoth of a mean bowling machine. These expectations were often too high and disappointments were instantaneously followed by loud cries of spontaneous sacking from the team.

Pakistani fans can be demanding – we have little sports to channel our pride and few heroes to worship – and in Akhtar and Afridi we had found two megastars to worship, love, hate and cry for. Afridi lumbered on – statistically poor – for a host of reasons, while Akhtar fell behind.

The blue-uniform-wearing Akhtar of the earlier period was my idol. But years later, flying high above the pitch, his left palm stretched out and facing the east as his right arm bent beyond normal human limits due to hyper-extension, an arm muscle as thick as a bunch of bricks, he rolled and delivered a reverse-swinging, in-dipping, toe-crushing Yorker to Sachin Tendulkar – the first ball he ever bowled to him – and cleaned his stumps. One ball earlier he had removed Rahul “The Wall” Dravid, and while these balls have little importance before the ones delivered by Wasim Akram during the 1992 World Cup, they signify what Shoaib Akhtar was, and perhaps could have been.

At the height of his career, he had one of the best strike rates in ODI history, and during January 2002 and December 2003, he took 72 wickets in the 13 test matches he played at a brilliant average of 15.08, taking a wicket every 30th ball. He missed more matches than he played and his test career was one of the biggest disappointments his fans had to face. Mercurial mood swings, dubious injury claims and a generally “bad” temperament didn’t do well to his career. All that, however, would be brushed aside as soon as he took a wicket and launched into his signature aeroplane dance – the drama of a fast bowler personified.

As he announced his retirement during this last World Cup, I couldn’t help but wish that Akhtar should go out with a bang. On his last hurrah, he managed to bowl a couple of indippers that cleaned the stumps of talented batsmen. (That was before our notoriously pathetic hole-in-the-glove wicket-keeper – the man will not be named – dropped easy catches off him on consecutive deliveries in what would be Akhtar’s last match!) A 28-run fest and a six off the last delivery brought Akhtar’s career to an end, as young Wahab Riaz was preferred over him for the next matches.

It was painful and agonizing to watch Shoaib Akhtar sitting in the pavilion, visibly depressed and biting his nails. For a career as flashy as his to come to such an end, and on such a sorrowful and dull note, was disheartening. He did not get to have his last hurrah. For those of us who were and are his fans, it was like being robbed of a right.

The Friday Times:May the force be by Shahid Saeed

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