Pakistan's strength will be its spinners

There is, first of all, the slight matter of thanking the Pakistan Cricket Board for conferring on me the honour of naming the media centre of the Qadhafi Stadium after me. But I think that Ayaz Memon who is the editor of Cricket Talk has got it right. In a congratulatory message to me he said that the PCB, in effect, was honouring all the media, both print and electronic. That's the way I see it too. The honour has gone to me because I have been around longer than others, a tribute as much to my longevity as to my contribution.

The PCB becomes the first among the cricket boards of the world to acknowledge the role of the media in the development and promotion of the game. All newspapers devote several pages to sports and there are separate sports channels on television.

I can remember the days when there were sports reporters who were generalists and they covered all games. Now, there are specialist cricket reporters and columnists. The electronic media in Pakistan plays it safe but the print media has shown a refreshing forthrightness but, on the whole, has shown a sense of responsibility.

There are occasions when a section of it has gone half-cock. But the subcontinent has been relatively free, so far, of tabloid journalism though there is some evidence of it in the garb of investigative reporting. But I am proud to have been a part of the media and I have accepted the honour conferred on me, with humility as far as my person is concerned, and with pride on behalf of the media.

The serious business of England's tour of Pakistan, the test matches begin. Both teams will have to put the one-day internationals behind them, there being nothing to learn from them. There is one immediate observation I have to make. These being winter months in Pakistan, the daylight hours will be shortened. It will be impossible to get in the mandatory 90 overs per day.

The dew factor does not allow for an earlier start. Thus only 70 over a day will be possible and spread over 5 days, this means that 100 overs will be lost effectively reducing the test match to a four day one minus 10 overs. The obvious solution would be to make them six-day test matches and this should be put to the England though one feels that the weather factor should have been taken into consideration when the programme was drawn up.

There is too the imponderable of the fog factor that afflicts the north of Pakistan at this time of the year. The test series against Zimbabwe was seriously affected by it, with one test match, at Faisalabad being completely fogged off. This means that if we have to have results, then sporting pitches have to be prepared.

There is considerable talk that spinning tracks will be prepared. But a wicket is not a custom-tailored suit which can be cut to specifications. The soil and the climate have some say in the matter. I have known the "doctoring" of wickets go horribly wrong and what were meant to be spinning wickets, their under-preparedness also suited bowlers like Malcolm Marshall who once won a test match in Lahore in about one and a half day. But on paper, Pakistan's strength will be its spinners and that's the way that Pakistan will attack, with Mushtaq Ahmed, Saqlain Mushtaq and Shahid Afridi. Interesting to conjecture what Pakistan's strategy would have been if Shoaib Akhtar had been available. Shoaib Akhtar is presently undergoing repairs under the watchful eye of a specially appointed PCB doctor and will not be turning his arm over in the series against England.

England is a thoroughly professional team which these days is meant to include sledging, showing dissent and churlishness. But on a positive side, will have done their homework against the spinners though in their two side matches, at Rawalpindi and Peshawar, they were not exposed to quality spinners. But in their team meetings, they would have worked out a strategy against the spinners. England's batting has been bolstered by the inclusion of Mike Atherton who is a good player of spin bowling. It's not going to be easy for Pakistan.

I remember, many, many years ago how Sonny Ramadhin had mesmerised the English batsmen until in a test match Peter May and Colin Cowdrey went after him and that was all but the end of Sonny Ramadhin. The same treatment was handed to Shane Warne, first by Salim Malik and then by Sachin Tendulkar which may explain why he does not have the sweetest of memories of the subcontinent. But Pakistan is lucky that they have very good back-up seam attack, led by Wasim Akram. England may not have quality spinners but they have an excellent pace attack and the reverse swing factor is also there and Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick and Craig White do get a good measure of reverse swing which has now become eminently respectable.

When the Pakistanis were getting reverse swing, the British media and some of the England players were convinced that the Pakistanis were cheating by tampering with the ball. And what a fuss was made, a highminded, self-righteous tabloid press went bananas in their accusations. When Copernicus revealed a multiplicity of worlds, he was persecuted as a heretic. Charles Darwin did not meet such an agonising fate but many schools still forbid the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. Of course, the tabloid press never offered any apologies for calling Pakistan bowler cheats. Perhaps, they felt they were not obliged to do so. We were, after all, Pakis.

We had all hoped, the Pakistanis that is, that England's tour would be free of controversies but there must be something in the air of the subcontinent that makes the visits of England teams look like feuds and so full of bickering. Let us hope for the best.