'All I want to do is bat'
Pakistan have tried a number of openers in the last few years, but in Salman Butt they might have found a long-term solution
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It feels great. However, the expectations and the pressure build up at a high rate; but that's the way it works at this level and the best way to deal with it is to work hard. Life definitely has changed after those centuries against India and Australia. And I thank God for the recognition I am getting today.
Of course, we are Muslims and we believe in Allah. We do whatever Islam says and we try to be what we are supposed to be. Religion is the complete code of life and we follow its guiding principles.
It just takes one ball to get any batsman - a Viv Richards or a small fish like me. Yes, I will never forget that moment. I was so depressed and disappointed.
Cricket comes as a natural passion to me. Nobody taught me from a book that there is a game called cricket and it's played like this. When I was growing up only cricket caught my attention. And then playing in the streets, and playing at home, breaking mirrors and tube-lights - that was the build-up.
Initially I wasn't allowed to play because I was too young; then when I finally started playing I kept batting without getting out. So they put down a condition that if I wanted to play I had to bat last. My aim always was to carry on batting and to play freely. That's what I still want to do.
I've been fortunate enough not to have heard even one about it so far.
I got this book as a gift, called Portraits of the Game, by Shyam Bhatia. I am not much of a reader. Growing up, I would always pick up books that had scorecards and records of past players and games. By reading about the experience of cricketers, one feels motivated to go as far as they did, but one has to walk in to get either a zero or a hundred. I would say cricket is 99 per cent hard work and one per cent natural talent.
There are two: the first one was the century I got against India in the BCCI Platinum Jubilee one-dayer at Eden Gardens in 2004, which helped us win. And the second was performing well against Australia in Australia.
In the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne I got out on 70 in the first innings. Before getting out I defended and defended well, but they bowled such a good line. The conditions were not like they are on subcontinent wickets, where we play can our shots with the feet nowhere near the bat, and the Australians took advantage of that weakness. So I decided that I would go for my shots if the ball was there to be hit. And at the SCG, I did just that. And I learnt one thing: if you play against Australia, it's better to go at them than to depend on their mistakes because they don't make many. So when Shane Warne bowled a loose delivery, I pulled it. It was mistimed but fortunately it fell just short of Glenn McGrath. I was so relieved that he had not caught it, and celebrated wildly.
Adam Gilchrist wrote in his newspaper column that my innings showed that I was on my way to filling in the shoes of someone like Saeed Anwar. That was a very big compliment for me because Anwar was a great, great player and he was my idol along with Aamer Sohail.
That's just a phrase we use. There are times when we play a shot and our feet are not in position or we get stuck. The hand-eye coordination is there, but the body is stiff and the legs don't support you. At such times Bob Woolmer will call out: "Where are your feet? In the toilet?"
They have been brought up in a different environment with different facilities and back-up to support them. Their options are vast, while in the subcontinent the case is different.
The one thing about him was his fielding. Rarely would he not hit the stumps when there was a chance. Then there was his aggressive batting style. So those are things that I observed and told myself that I could work more on.
I've made a lot of mistakes. Obviously, it's not a school ... koi kaan nahin kheenchega yahan (Nobody will twist your ears). I've to learn by myself and occasionally knock on the doors of seniors and learn from them.
Nagraj Gollapudi is news editor at ESPNcricinfo