Ahmer Naqvi
Just how bad are Pakistan overseas?
Their numbers largely suffer in comparison to their Asian neighbours outside the subcontinent, West Indies and Zimbabwe
Ahmer Naqvi
30-Nov-2016
Both the idea and the practice of "Pakistani democracy" are fragile concepts, ones that have been regularly disrupted by military takeovers. So perhaps it was inevitable that a few out-of-touch lawmakers went into a huff when they perceived the cricket team's push-ups at Lord's as being meant to support the army - and not the trainers in the army they were actually meant to be a tribute to. The team ritualised the celebration over the England tour. It became an immediate way of showing the unity of the side, and their self-belief.
There were no push-ups in New Zealand over the past month, and beyond the poor performances it was also because, unlike when they went to England, Pakistan had zero preparations for this tour. Instead of a month-long bootcamp and tour matches, Pakistan's first bat on the tour was in a Test match.
What followed over the next four innings rekindled a ritual that many of us have now got used to - waking up at odd hours to watch a procession of Pakistani batsmen edge it to the cordon and help the team collapse. The longer I sat through the cold nights of this tour, the more I became exasperated at the intense feeling of déjà vu invoked by watching another collapse.
Full postWhat Amir needs to learn from Junaid
To succeed in the UAE, Amir needs to look to the likes of Junaid and Ajmal and learn the art of bowling dry
Ahmer Naqvi
19-Oct-2016
It is not clear where the style originated from, though there are many guesses. I always thought the inspiration for the hairstyle that captured the imagination of Pakistani males in the '90s was either David Beckham, the footballer, or Nick Carter, the singer from the band Backstreet Boys. Others have reached back further, arguing that Bollywood actor Rahul Roy was the one who influenced the likes of Wasim Akram to adopt the style. Either way, you can recognise it immediately - long hair parted in the middle and styled in a bowl-like way.
In either case, the style was gradually usurped by others but never truly went away. In the late aughts, Bollywood icon Salman Khan reintroduced it in a cult film and it was perhaps that influence that shaped the hair Mohammad Amir would have in the year that he captured the world's imagination. It was also the year that ended with him disgraced and on trial.
Up until then Amir's rise had been spectacular, even by Pakistani fast bowler standards. He had bowled one of the all-time great opening overs, in the final of the 2009 World T20, bouncing out the tournament's standout batsman for a duck. He followed it up by bamboozling Australia's and England's Test sides with both swing and pace. And in between, he picked up Sachin in a tournament match. Akram, perhaps moved by Amir's hair as much as by his wrist position, anointed Amir as his successor while the latter was still in his teens.
Full postButt has the runs but not the strike rate
If he comes back into the ODI side it won't be the right decision - moral implications aside
Ahmer Naqvi
20-Sep-2016
When one is writing for any publication, it is best to try and avoid too much emotion. Though your passions are central to any good writing, if you wear your colours too openly, you are prone to being sideswiped by accusations of bias and prejudice. After a few harrowing experiences with cyber mobs, I have generally tried to hide any agenda behind data and evidence.
But the person I am writing about here is somebody I have opposed quite vocally, and so it seems futile to try to pretend I am being objective here. With that disclaimer in place, let us examine the news that the former Pakistan captain and opener, Salman Butt, is expected to be included in the upcoming ODI series against West Indies.
My issue with Butt isn't limited to the fact that the spot-fixing scandal tainted him. While the act was extremely contemptible and shameful, over the last few years I have consistently argued for allowing the three disgraced cricketers to return to playing the sport at any level once their bans were served. In my opinion, if you don't wish to see them back, then your issue is with the laws and not the players themselves.
Full postWhy the 444 v Pakistan was inevitable
Is it surprising that a team famed for its bowling attack conceded the highest ODI total? Not if you have followed their fortunes closely
Ahmer Naqvi
31-Aug-2016
My first job after graduating from university was at a news channel where I was assigned to international news stories. Soon after I joined, news broke one day of the Palestinian political/militant group Hamas storming the offices of another Palestinian political/militant entity, Fatah. As someone who had been out of touch with developments in Palestine for a few years, I was shocked at the idea of a Palestinian civil war. Without knowing the context of the developments, the final outcome seemed rather out of the blue.
On Tuesday, as cricket fans across the world tuned in to the score England had put up in the third ODI against Pakistan, I sensed a similar feeling of incredulousness amongst some. How had Pakistan just conceded the largest score in the history of the international 50-over game? How had a side famed for its bowling done worse than even any Associate side had managed in ODIs? Seen from afar, it seemed completely out of the blue. Yet the seeds of this destruction were laid several years before.
It is generally agreed that it is Pakistan's batting that has let them down in recent times. Their bowling has always been seen as being among the better attacks in the world. But the reality is that Pakistan's bowling has been in a tailspin for a while now.
Full postThe music of Pakistan at Edgbaston
Rahat Ali's spell to Joe Root came across as boring - or did it?
Ahmer Naqvi
11-Aug-2016
Hindustani classical music - the millennia-old premier art form of the subcontinent - is almost impossible to appreciate without understanding its meanings and symbols. For anyone ignorant of that context, the form can be both aesthetically confusing and fundamentally boring.
I began thinking about the subtle difference between something that one person might find boring and another would view as a work of art, while watching the fourth day of the third Test between England and Pakistan.
Pakistan had taken two quick wickets and were bowling wide of the stumps with a spread field. All over TV and social media, people complained of how boring it was. Could a little context have provided greater appreciation?
Full postMisbah and the art of wicket acquisition
Lord's presented us with a fine study in his methods, where bowler and captain showcase their styles while sticking to a larger plan
Ahmer Naqvi
20-Jul-2016
On Sunday night, as televisions beamed pictures of a joyous Pakistan team celebrating in a style that was deemed to be as offensive as urinating on the pitch or dancing a decades-old meme, one fan began tweeting pop-music analogies for every player on the winning side. For the captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, he wrote "Misbah: Rohail Hyatt's production career. He's awesome, but everybody complains when they are bored. Screw everyone."
For those who don't know, Hyatt produced the first six seasons of the wildly successful live-music TV show Coke Studio, which irrevocably shaped music in the region. However, by the final season, both critics and audiences felt that the show had gone boring and formulaic. It was an incredible complaint, given that even if the songs sounded familiar, season six saw them (for the first time) being performed by musicians from across the planet in conjunction with Pakistani ones. In other words, Rohail had taken an idea that grew from Pakistani culture and then showed how it could have a global relevance. Yet in the bare metrics of ratings and likes, the season was deemed subpar.
Back then, music critic Safieh Shah, reviewing the season, wrote in an essay of how "people become ensconced in the comforts of their jadedness, fearful of opening up their hearts and emotions... to the beauty of truth. This is what I felt [about] this season… that there is something profound that we miss when we don't know what to believe in."
Full postUmar Akmal and the meaning of ambition
There are no hotheads, big mouths or flashy dressers in the current Pakistani side. It's a drastic change from the country's teams of old
Ahmer Naqvi
23-Jun-2016
Do you know of Icarus? He was the lead figure in the Greek legend of a man who attaches wings of feathers and wax to himself in order to fly, only to have the sun melt the wax, causing him to plummet to his death. The comic artist Randall Munroe once wrote, "I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive." The ancient parable viewed Icarus' act as foolhardy, but Munroe asks us to see the tale as an engineering problem instead, and to appreciate his ambition.
I have been thinking about the idea of ambition lately, and I feel like we see ambition as a natural progression from the ability to choose. If we can make our own choices, it is expected that we make the best ones. Choosing to be the best is what we understand ambition to be, and it seems like a rational expression of how we are meant to live our lives. But what exactly does ambition serve, and is there any point to it?
I was reminded of ambition by a meme I saw recently. Someone took a picture Umar Akmal posted of his new haircut, which had elaborate curved lines where the scalp showed through. Next to it, they posted a graph, which displayed Akmal's career batting averages in all formats. The punchline, if you haven't already guessed it, was that the downward-looping lines on his head seemed to mirror the initial peaks and eventual trough of his batting average graphs. The symbolism was so obvious it felt overwrought: here was one of the all-time great batting talents of the country, who had spent his entire career being known for his bizarre aesthetic choices rather than for his batting.
Full postWould we still watch if the game was made more bowler-friendly?
We love the limitless possibilities batting offers, but what if the laws were tweaked to favour bowlers rather than batsmen?
Ahmer Naqvi
25-May-2016
At an odd hour a few nights ago, the internet threw up two videos at me. The first was captioned "Muhammad Asif to Ponting. Out-swinger, then in-swinger in same over. Sent Ponting back to retirement." The second was titled "Records tumble as Kohli, ABdV go berserk."
Here are the facts. The first was from a match played in Test whites in England. The second was in colours, from an IPL match played at night in India. The reaction was: one unfolded like a heist, the other felt both anonymous and noisy.
I find puritanism unsettling - there is too much baggage and violence associated with it - but I can see someone finding that reaction puritanical. That someone might even have been me, given that I have often found myself defending T20 in the debate over whether the format is cricket or not.
Full postThe problem with Pakistan's chief selectors
The constant chopping and changing that occurred during the tenures of Moin Khan and Haroon Rasheed has affected Pakistan's ODI fortunes
Ahmer Naqvi
26-Apr-2016
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, according to one movie, was making people forget he existed. The role of the chief selector in Pakistan doesn't quite measure up to that of Lucifer, but it is generally forgotten about despite its overwhelming importance. The thought struck me while reading about Waqar Younis' infamous leaked report, where his top recommendation was to include the coach in the selection committee, headed by a chief selector who had played "modern-era" cricket.
Since the coach and captain can't select players, it means that Pakistan's selectors are the ones fashioning the team's long-term vision. Just as importantly, the selectors are also a different power centre, and players know that chumminess with the selectors can trump the disdain of captains and coaches. Given how the politics of Pakistan's dressing rooms make reality-show drama look tame, this is a risky set-up to operate with.
I wanted to take a look at the challenges and choices of the chief selector during Waqar's tenure, when two men occupied the role: Moin Khan and Haroon Rasheed. I have only considered ODI cricket here, excluding T20 due to lack of space and Tests because the side was extremely settled, leaving little for the selectors to do.
Full postHave Pakistan given up?
It looks like their batsmen and bowlers have, while their captain relies on solo efforts
Ahmer Naqvi
24-Mar-2016
There is something intriguing, and perhaps tragic, about things that come in the middle. Be it a middle child, or middle age, or the middle class, they all share the fact that they are what's left behind once the top and bottom, or right and left, or whatever, have been sorted. We care about what's first and what's last, and are slightly oblivious about the rest.
Inevitably, those in the middle have to pretend harder. Take the middle class, who might not have the goods the rich do, so they pretend to have the taste for them. Or the middle child, who pretends to get the jokes the elders crack to avoid being grouped with the baby. Or middle age, where you hope that the trendy, expensive haircut you just got will allow you to fit in when you go out on weekends.
The tragedy of being in the middle is that you struggle to define yourself on your own terms, and if you fail to do so, then there comes a point when you just start giving up on all the pretence.
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