Ahmer Naqvi
Is sporting fandom a set of rituals or a relationship?
Do you have to be obsessive in your love for the game to qualify as a true fan?
Ahmer Naqvi
01-Aug-2015
I think it was born of overcompensation, but after several years of writing on cricket and refusing to deal with statistics, I have spent the past year or so learning how to enjoy them, and have come to share the fascination they have for others. But today I wanted to return to writing on ideas that can't be improved or disproved through the use of numbers and context. I wanted to write on an idea that has developed through my personal experience of watching and loving cricket, yet one I feel others have experienced too.
Is following a sport a set of rituals or a relationship?
Taken literally, that sentence doesn't make immediate sense, so allow me to elaborate. When I was young, and for a long time after, the true mark of a "cricket fan" was the depth of his engagement. The proof of this depth was provided through a series of practices that felt ritualistic to me. A true fan would watch every ball of every match; a true fan would wake up at odd hours and stay up even later; a true fan spent his spare time reading up on cricket and collecting scorecards and finding ways to get autographs of the team when they stayed at a local hotel.
Full postYasir, Younis and the gift of Pallekele
The Sri Lanka-Pakistan series was of the sort very few know how to appreciate, and it should be cherished all the more for it
Ahmer Naqvi
10-Jul-2015
One of the ways that desi culture intersects with globalisation is that most people have one or more relatives living abroad, upon whom it is incumbent to bring back gifts when they return to the homeland. Chocolate, perfume and electronic equipment are the most popular choices, but every now and then someone brings over something that the recipients don't know what to do with. For example, back before coffee shops became common, a relative gifted my family artisan coffee and a French press. After a few failed attempts at familiarising ourselves with the bitter, intense flavour of the coffee and trying to understand the mechanics of the flask, everyone gave up. The two items were prominently displayed in a kitchen cabinet and never touched again.
I have a feeling that the third Test of the Sri Lanka v Pakistan series might be marked by the same confused reverence in Pakistani cricket. On the one hand, its value is undeniable - it brought all sorts of statistics and records that will stand for a long time. On the other hand, it was the most unpredictable conclusion to what had been a genuinely unpredictable series - Pakistan chasing down a huge score with disturbing ease.
Pakistan looked out of the Galle Test by the halfway mark, yet roared back to a stunning win. Then Sri Lanka defied the seeming inexperience of their bowling attack and ripped the visitors apart in the one stadium where they hadn't been doing well. Then one of the world's worst chasing sides gobbled up a mammoth target like they were at one of those garish, 100-dish, all-you-can-eat Iftar buffets.
Full postSri Lanka and Pakistan's arranged marriage
The two teams are increasingly seeing more of each other in recent times. Both are also in similar stages of transition
Ahmer Naqvi
15-Jun-2015
Some time over the past decade, in a way both subtle and inevitable, Pakistani and Sri Lankan cricket embraced the familiarity, intimacy and resignation of an arranged marriage. For most of the outside world, their relationship is probably defined by the 2009 terrorist attack. Yet perhaps the greater truth has been what has happened since.
Since 2011, what used to be a biennial cycle of Test tours has become an annual one for the two sides. Moreover, in the past ten years, Sri Lanka have been Pakistan's most common opponent in Tests and ODIs, and the T20s they'll play soon will give Sri Lanka the clean sweep as Pakistan's most regular opponents.
The two countries have quite a few things in common, particularly a disdain - both politically and in cricketing terms - for India. Indeed, one of the reasons that Sri Lanka's cricket fraternity and society at large have been so forthcoming towards Pakistan is because (according to several of them) they know the experience of cricket isolation caused by a state of war. The cricketing culture in both countries is marked by a high tolerance for the unusual, and each of bowling's latest innovations/sins frequently involves their players.
Full postA glimpse of normalcy in cacophony
Years from now Pakistanis will look at the scorecard and wonder what the fuss was about
Ahmer Naqvi
22-May-2015
And just like that, it finally happened. A bowler ran in to bowl and a batsman blocked the ball. Over two thousand days of exile ended with that simple act of cricket.
The hours leading up to that moment had felt surprisingly normal. Those interminable queues shepherded by sweating policemen; that chaos and confusion around parking; the spontaneous humour throughout it all. At one point, as we crossed a row of metal detectors that were constantly going off, the crowd started mimicking the cacophony of robotic sounds. The serious cops broke into laughter, and the paranoia and nerves began to dissipate along with their chuckles.
The Lahore crowd also made the occasion count. The entire stadium was heaving when the Zimbabwean anthem came on and when they played the Pakistani anthem the very foundations of the stadium were left shaking. They were raucous right through the long build-up - the strict security meant that people were supposed to be at the ground well before the match started.
Full postRusty, anxious, and ready
Cricket is returning to Pakistan after six years. The jazba is coming back, too
Ahmer Naqvi
21-May-2015
When Bobby Gill's mother was pregnant with him, his father - a strapping young man famed for his resemblance to Rajesh Khanna - did not want another child. They already had a few, and so he asked his wife to eat garam khanay(dishes supposed to have "warming" properties), in order to induce an abortion. "Magar us sab ke bawajud, aaj aap dekh rahay hain, mei khara huun aap ke samnay. (But despite all that, as you can see, I am standing before you today.)
It is a terrible cliché to use your taxi driver as a metaphor in your story, but as Bobby drove me around Lahore's 40°-plus afternoon, I couldn't help but feel that his anecdote perfectly captured what I had come to report on - cricket had died out, yet it stood before me today.
"You see, this tour is an IV drip for cricket, there's no doubt about that. But cricket is still on the borderline." Mian Mansur Hamid is drenched in sweat, sitting on a bench near the nets of Yuslim cricket club in Model Town, of which he is the president. He likes listening to Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, he likes that his club gave young kids a direction and a future, he likes that parents increasingly saw cricket as a profession, and he loves how much his young bowlers, particularly Raza Hasan and Usman Qadir, had tested him in the nets just now. He liked that this tour was taking place, but the question in his mind was the one that many in Pakistan's cricket community don't want to think about just yet - will this tour be a one-off? If not, who else would be desperate enough to send a team to sweltering Lahore amid suffocating security?
Full postPakistan's six years of drought and hope
Since the 2009 attack, their numbers have put them near the bottom of the pile, but there have also been a few silver linings
Ahmer Naqvi
09-May-2015
Saadat Hasan Manto is celebrated today across the subcontinent as one of its most evocative writers, particularly for his ability to tell the unforgettable tales of the horrors of Partition. Yet during his lifetime, his unflinching stories led to several obscenity charges and controversies. These did not bother him - he would pithily retort that he was simply holding a mirror up to society; it wasn't his fault if people didn't like what they saw.
It is a rough analogy, but Pakistani cricket - if we are to imagine it as some living, gasping organism - is going through something similar. It has come under increasingly harsh and cruel persecution for the last few years. Yet despite how much people blame the shoddiness of the characters or the pace of the narrative, Pakistan cricket can conceivably turn around and tell them that its story over the last decade is the story of the country itself.
When 2006 ended, it was the seventh year in eight that Pakistan had finished with a positive win-loss record in ODIs - a feat the team had never achieved in more than three consecutive years till then. Around the same time, it was witnessing a revolution in its global image, led by a ruler who was being feted on The Daily Show; fuelled by a rampant (aid-driven) economy; and articulated by new heroes in fashion, music and television.
Full postWhy we loved Wahab's spell
Pakistanis glory in spectacle because it provides a buffer against the disappointment they have come to accept as their lot
Ahmer Naqvi
08-Apr-2015
A horde of young, working-class men riding their motorcycles while lying flat or standing on one leg, racing each other to a beach they might not live to see. Women smashing glass bangles against bare wrists to display their anguish. Men unloading tracers of death into the night sky to celebrate the wedding of a relative. News channels displaying grotesque animations of terrible tragedies.
A spectacle is a statement.
Pakistanis are a people who can't resist spectacle. We can't resist staring, gawking, glaring at what we find worth looking at, and we can't look away when it's offered to us. In fact, we stare so readily and so lustily that guidebooks for foreigners visiting the country advise simply getting used to inquisitive pairs of eyes everywhere.
Full postMisbah in the context of Pakistan's lifesavers
Like medics who go beyond the call of duty in trying circumstances, Pakistan's captain inspires his side to victories while dealing with less-than-ideal situations
Ahmer Naqvi
16-Mar-2015
A few days ago I read a blog by a passionate Misbah fan, thanking the Pakistan captain for all that he has achieved, and asking his forgiveness on behalf of the fans who have harangued and disrespected him for so long. Like almost all other reflections on Misbah-ul-Haq, this one described him by describing Shahid Afridi first, and explaining that Misbah was all that Lala is not. When I asked some Misbah fans why he isn't contextualised in Pakistani society the way Afridi is, someone answered that it's because honest and hard-working people never get anywhere in Pakistan.
To me, that felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of both Misbah and Pakistan. Allow me to explain.
The person I fell in love with is a doctor who has worked a lot with state-run hospitals, and it is in places like those that I saw the sort of heroes that Misbah can often embody. The hand-wringing about what Pakistan's batting will do without Misbah feels like a benign version of the despair you feel when you wonder what the sick and the poor will do without the volunteer-run ambulance services, without the nurses and orderlies who offer services beyond their brief, without the doctors who pay for medicines out of their own pockets. Of course, there are untold stories of cruel corruption in those places too, but one really has to be there to appreciate the quiet nobility and heroism of those who somehow prevent chaos from breaking out.
Full postThe vices and virtues of Misbah
The debate about whether Misbah-ul-Haq is holding Pakistan back or holding them together is obscuring the team's real problems
Ahmer Naqvi
01-Mar-2015
Pakistan's batting over the past week can be reduced to these two sets of numbers: 1 for 4, and 14 off 10. Against West Indies, they lost four wickets for one run. Against Zimbabwe, they put up 14 in the first ten overs of their innings. They are the sort of numbers that other sides dissolve boards or have their Test credentials questioned over. For Pakistan, those shocking numbers have inevitably become a debate about their best batsman in the tournament: Misbah-ul-Haq.
In fact, for Pakistani cricket, the past four years have been all about this very long, very monotonous debate: is Misbah holding Pakistan back or is he holding them together?
You are probably aware of how this goes. Detractors complain that Misbah plays too slowly and is too negative. His supporters find such sentiments shocking and almost offensive, arguing that he is forced to bat this way to compensate for his team-mates constantly failing.
Full postFor the love of 1992
We're forever nostalgic for the format of the fifth World Cup, but really it's all about how competitive World Cup games are
Ahmer Naqvi
21-Feb-2015
The ICC has announced that the next two World Cups will feature ten teams playing each other in a round-robin format. It is the circle coming full, in a way, since it brings with it a return to the much-celebrated format of the 1992 edition. Indeed, the 1992 World Cup remains perhaps the most popular one ever held, as evidenced by the fervour of fans in memes, pictures and replica shirts.
Much like the similarly iconic 1970 World Cup in football, the '92 cricket World Cup owes its popularity to the advent of colour. In 1970, it was the television transmissions that came in colour instead of black and white. All of cricket's World Cups had been broadcast in colour, but this was the first one to use coloured uniforms. It was also the first of only three cricket World Cups where every team had the same basic design for uniforms, affording a pleasing aesthetic unity to proceedings. It seems odd, but modern kit-makers have rarely gone with the superb palette chosen in earlier editions; 1992 was easily the best here - Australia's yellows have never been more mango-like since then, Pakistan's green never more subtle and electric, and it had the best England shirt in existence.
But as noted, it is the tournament's format that is more seriously celebrated. Indeed, the ICC has spent every World Cup since 1992 tinkering and tampering with the format. Many aficionados have spent the years since calling for a return to the 1992 system, simply because it is meant to be more egalitarian. The presence of minnows had long been blamed for the presence of boring, one-sided encounters, while the example of 1992 was used to justify the ICC's recent claim that a Cup with only ten teams would mean no boring games.
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