The second coming of Pakistan cricket (18 January 1999)

18 January 1999

The second coming of Pakistan cricket

By Saad Shafqat

This January marks 22 years since the Sydney Test of 1977. On paper, it was a Test match win for Pakistan. But it changed everything.

In 1954, on an overcast August afternoon at the Kennington Oval in London, Fazal Mahmood bowled a leg-cutter to Len Hutton that announced to the world the arrival of Pakistan cricket. Hutton, at the time the record-holder of the highest individual score in Test cricket and one of the best batsmen ever, edged the ball to Imtiaz Ahmed and brought Pakistan ever nearer to victory in a Test match on its maiden trip to England.

The moment has been captured on photograph, now immortalized in the fading grey scale of collectors' thing about it is the sense it conveys of Hutton being utterly deceived. He is bent half-forward, bat dangling just beyond the front pad, maddeningly tentative. Being a Yorkshireman, Hutton could not have suffered this easily, yet his face is blank and emotionless. Fazal has been caught in mid-follow-through, arms half-raised and mouth reflexively open in appeal. One can make out that the first two fingers of his right hand are still stretched and twisted, fresh from pulling at the seam. The centre-piece - the ball itself - is with Imtiaz, the wicket-keeper, whose face is awash with pure glee. Euphoric at the prospect of victory, he is crading the ball in his gloves and looking towards the sky with joyous contentment.

England had needed 168 runs in that innings to win the match, but in the event they could only manage 143. And there you had it:

Test victory in England on the first trip there - something no country had done before and none has done since - this was the coming of Pakistan cricket. Fazal had taken 12 wickets in the match and,long after the stands had emptied out, continued to be cheered on the balcony of the Oval pavilion by a small group of expatriates.

Those must have been heady days indeed. Barely four years old as a Test-playing nation, Pakistan had pulled off a great feat against great odds. Not only had they overcome the sheer psychological weight of playing England in England in 1954, just a few years after political freedom from them, but that particular English side, boasting Hutton, May, Compton, Graveney, Evans, Tyson and Statham, was also packed with formidable talent. Beating England in England may not seem like much today, but in the cricket world of the 1950s, it was almost a miracle. Indeed India, with arguably greater pure talent than Pakistan, would not achieve the same feat until 1971.

As with all promising beginnings, though, this one too was hard to live up to. Soon after that phenomenal high. The dark ages set in. For the next twenty years, Pakistan cricket wandered aimlessly in the desert of mediocrity, suffering a string of embarrassing draws and humiliating defeats. Nothing seemed to work. Despite the occasional quality performance by an individual player, failure became the standard national expectation. In cricket, as in political life, Pakistan approached the 1970s with abysmal morale, overpowered by defeatism. Although promising new talent was blooded in during the decade of the 60s, this still did not translate into victories against the major cricketing powers.

Everyone agreed that the new players - Asif Iqbal, Majid Khan, Mushtaq Mohammad and Zaheer Abbas among them - had world-class skill, but world-class success still eluded. The fresh contingent did manage to defeat a weak New Zealand team at Dunedin (only Pakistan's second test victory on tour, after the Oval Test), but they could not defeat the giants, England, Australia and the West Indies. In fact, in both England in 1971 and Australia in 1973, Tests that had seemed all but won were disappointingly lost. One had to wonder if, despite having players as good as these, Pakistan simply lacked the will to win. We looked around for a saviour, a messiah, but saw nothing.

Since the departure of Fazal Mahmood, Pakistan had not seen a bowler who offered any serious promise of international success. It stood to reason, then, that if there was to be a messiah, he would be a bowler and not a batsman. Batting makes you look pretty but, since victory in cricket demands that the opposition be bowled out twice, it is bowling that really helps you win.

In fact, there was to be a messiah for the deliverance of Pakistan cricket and, for the most part, he was going to be a bowler. Imran Khan was born in Lahore in November 1952. When Pakistan defeated England at the Oval, he was 17 months old. His impeccable cricket pedigree hinted at a great future. Cousins Majid Khan and Javed Burki would play in Tests for Pakistan and uncle Jahangir (Majid's father) had played for pre-partition India. Imran would play for Aitchison and Oxford before finally being called to the Pakistan Test side. His debut performance, though obscure, merits review if for nothing else than for the contrast it creates with his eventual legend. Batting at No. 8 in Pakistan's only innings, he was run out for 5 and can only be remembered as one of several partners during Zaheer Abbas's unforgettable 274. He did open the bowling, with Asif Masood, but was ineffective and returned 0 for 36 and 0 for 19. The match was drawn. No one guessed that in less than six years from that day, he would be the architect of the second coming of Pakistan cricket.

In retrospect, the moment of deliverance could have been predicted by the fall of 1976, when the cricket season began in Pakistan with a visit from the New Zealand Test team. At the time, Pakistan enjoyed the service of first-rate batsmen in Majid, Zaheer, Asif and Mushtaq (and a new-comer called Javed Miandad was soon to be added to the arsenal). More importantly, in the appointment of Mushtaq Mohammad as captain, there was finally an inspiring and intelligent leader. Pakistan won the 3-Test encounter 2-0. Imran, who opened the bowling with Sarfraz Nawaz, was thought to have performed well overall but nothing world-class. The story of the series, in any case, was the batting of Javed Miandad.

It was in this upbeat climate that Pakistan's 1976-77 tour of Australia began. The team had capable batsmen and an astute captain. The bowling was solid and accurate, even if it did lack genuine pace. If the confidence was well-deserved, it was also badly needed. The Australians, who took all their sports very seriously, were very formidable opponents. Indeed, the stars of that side - Greg Chappell, Doug Walters, Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee - are still considered amongst the best cricketers ever to have played for Australia.

The first Test, at Adelaide, was drawn, with Imran taking 1 for 92 and 0 for 25. The second Test, at Melbourne, was won by Australia. In that match Imran. bowling 'fast medium' (a euphemism reserved for opening bowlers lacking true speed) was wicketless in the first Australian innings. But in the second innings, despite the flat batting track, he cut loose and took 5 for 122. The commentators murmured that he may have event sent down a few really quick ones. The giant in Imran had started to stir.

What is now simply referred to as 'the Sydney Test' began on January 14, 1977. It ws the third and final Test of the series. Australia approached it with casual confidence, expecting to win the series, but Pakistan entered it as frustrated underdogs, carrying the burden of twenty years of mediocrity on tour. Australia won the toss and decided to bat. Sarfaraz and Imran, opening the bowling for Pakistan, found humid conditions and a hard, lively track. Then, almost suddenly, Imran came into his own. With a swift run-up and a leaping action, he started bowling with menacing pace. When the first innings ended, he had taken 6 for 102, including the prized scalps of Greg Chappell and Dough Walters, and restricted Australia to 211. Prior to that, the lowest Australian score in a completed innings in that series had been over twice that much.

Pakistan, in their first innings, responded with a total of 360, with Asif Iqbal scoring an unblemished 120, ably supported by Javed Miandad (64) and Haroon Rasheed (57).Starting their second innings 149 runs in arrears, Australia lost their first wicket at 32, when Sarfraz Nawaz had Allan Turner caught by Majid Khan at first slip. Then Imran started breathing fire again. With pure, aggressive, blistering speed, he broke the Australian spine by accounting for Davis, McCosker and Walters, and then mopped up the tail in short order by dismissing Gilmour, O'Keefe and Lillee. Australia were kept to 180, giving Pakistan a token target of 32 to win - for all purposes, a mere formality. Bowling unchanged for four hours, Imran had given it everything. The shirt sleeve on his bowling arm had torn from the sheer physical effort of his marathon. The comparison was made to Australia's Dennis Lillee, then the best fast bowler in the world (and still one of the best ever).

For the Pakistani fans, who had mourned the absence of a genuine fast bowler of their own for so long that they had almost accepted it as a biological impossibility, this was an immense injection of self-esteem. With his 6 for 63 in the second innings, Imran had returned figures of 12 for 165 from the match.

In those days, satellite TV broadcasts were still a novelty for Pakistani fans. But when, on the morning of January 18, 1977, Majid Khan and Sadiq Mohammad walked out into a sun-drenched Sydney Cricket Ground to get the 32 runs needed for Pakistan's victory, Pakistan Television carried it live. It was 6 am in Pakistan, and every cricket fan with access to a TV set was in front of one. Ignoring the inevitability of Pakistan's win, Dennis Lillee came out bowling at the peak of his craft and dismissed Sadiq and Zaheer cheaply. But then Majid, with characteristic lack of footwork, lifted Lillee for six. Rising grandly over mid-wicket, Majid's shot came to symbolize the soaring of the national spirit. When the winning run was finally scored, more than just a Test match had been won. With his 12 for 99 at the Oval in 1954, Fazal had announced the arrival of Pakistan cricket. Now, after two decades of the most disappointing under achievement, Imran had announced its second coming.

On paper, the Sydney Test is another test victory but, with the perspective of distance now afforded, it is perhaps the most pivotal watermark in the cricket psyche of Pakistan. Sydney was destiny. It divides the two periods of Pakistan cricket, much like the Renaissance divides the epochs of human achievement. With Sydney, Imran was legitimately elevated to the ranks of the leading fast men of the day, like Roberts, Holding, Lillee and Thompson, and Pakistan, finally, had come not possession of cricket's most powerful weapon of mass-destruction, the good-length ball travelling at 90 mph. As the 1980s approached, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad emerged as the foundations of the Pakistan Test side. The two of them would go on to legendary success, in the process taking Pakistan cricket to dizzying heights and themselves ascending, as it were, to the pantheon of cricket gods. With his phenomenal debut series against New Zealand in late 1976, Javed had dared to challenge the spell of defeat that than been cast over Pakistan cricket in the 1950s, but it was Imran who finally freed us from its confinement. Magic had happened at Sydney. At Sydney, the spell had been broken. At Sydney, finally, the sun had again arisen on Pakistan cricket, and darkness had been obliterated.

Source :: Dawn (https://dawn.com/)