Mohammad Nawaz reinvents himself just in time for India

This story begins, as any story about Mohammad Nawaz, in an MCG dressing room, head in hands as he tries to hold back tears. Babar Azam isn't prone to giving rousing speeches, but he sees the sensitivity of the moment, and rises to it. He modulates the emotional temperature of the room perfectly, aware that, in front of rolling in-house PCB cameras, any attempts to be excessively rousing may come off as a loss of control.

"Koi masla nai hai, [It's not the end of the world]," the Pakistan captain begins, voice steady, pitch level. "We need to work together as a team." He then turns to Nawaz, who moments earlier just bowled the final over of that pulsating contest against India, failing to defend 16 as a match Pakistan had controlled slipped out of their hands.

"And especially you, Nawaz," Babar says to the man who cannot take his eyes off the floor. He switches to Punjabi, using both men's mother tongue to further cement their collective solidarity, "you're my match-winner, and I'll always have faith in you, come what may. Keep your head up."

It was particularly cruel on Nawaz, who had been forced into a situation that wasn't his to manage. He was bowling the final over when Pakistan had banked on pace to have finished the job by then. There was a no-ball for height that arguably wasn't the correct call, and a free hit that knocked back a stump only to then trickle away for three.

Just weeks earlier, Nawaz had produced a remarkable all-round performance against India in the Asia Cup in Dubai. He had doubled up as the game's most economical bowler and the most destructive batter, sealing a classic win that would go on secure Pakistan's berth in the final. It was that kind of showing that led Babar to declare him a match-winner, and yet, it had been wiped from memory, replaced by that chaotic over in Melbourne. Sunday will be the first time he faces India since that heartbreak.

The one thing Babar couldn't relate to - at the time, anyway - was being left out of the side. Pakistan have not always viewed Nawaz as a matchwinner in that same vein over his career, ever since he lit up the first game in PSL history, where he took 4-13 and was unbeaten with the bat for Quetta Gladiators. That is evident in when he has played; he has batted every position from 3 to 9. At four, where his numbers are strongest and where he first batted in that Asia Cup win over India, he would be sent in just twice more, and never again. With the ball, Pakistan have used him during the Powerplay, where he has bowled about a third of his T20I deliveries, and boasts a better economy rate than in any other phase of the innings.

But more telling is how often Pakistan have not used him at all. In the 162 T20Is they've played since his debut up until July this year - when Nawaz returned once more after 18 months in the wilderness - he had taken part in just 60. It seems Nawaz can be deployed, with ball and bat, whenever Pakistan want, or, as about two-thirds of the games during his career attest, not deployed whatsoever.

It is what makes this most recent resurgence hard to view as anything more than transitory, but his impact for Pakistan over the last 12 T20Is has been phenomenal. Called up for the spin-heavy conditions of Bangladesh in July, Nawaz is holding together this fragile strategy Pakistan have adopted under Mike Hesson, where specialist fast-bowling heft is sacrificed at the altar of piecemeal lower-order batting contributions.

A hat-trick during a five-for against Afghanistan, and significant runs accrued over the past month in the UAE at a strike rate just under 140 have propelled Nawaz to perhaps the single most important player in this Pakistan set-up. Hesson on Thursday called him "the best T20I bowler in the world right now" and the numbers agree; no Full Member player has more T20I wickets this year (21), and no one that has bowled at least 200 deliveries has bettered his economy rate of 6.47.

This is the kind of cricketer Nawaz was meant to become when he offered Pakistan a snapshot in that first PSL game. A decade on, Pakistan, and perhaps Nawaz himself, may finally have begun to work out what kind of cricketer he is. Though similar flashes in the past have proven false dawns, he has perhaps never played cricket as well, or as consistently, as he has in this latest edition of a cricketer whose reinventions are becoming impossible to keep track of.

In one sense, Nawaz cannot really be called a match-winner. Not in the conventional sense of the word. He isn't, and won't ever be, Pakistan's best spinner, and isn't, and won't ever be, their best batter, or their most explosive. But on any given day, he could fit either of those descriptions, and that, in T20I cricket, wins you matches. Matches of the sort Nawaz has been winning for Pakistan of late, and that Nawaz won when he last played India at the Asia Cup three years ago.