Why I love Inzi

In many ways Inzamam ul Haque epitomizes everything I love about cricket it self. So languor apparently, yet so exciting, at times so truly spectacular yet inherently so simple. Perhaps that’s precisely why Inzi’s been such a pillar of success and achievements; the intrinsic nature of the game complements his innate personality almost perfectly. I can’t for once imagine him being a sportsperson in another other capacity.

For starters, he never could have been that great on any individual sport, so that more or less automatically rules him out of possible careers in tennis, badminton, squash, or even long jump or golf for that matter. Everything about Inzi suggests he’s a team player: the large overbearing figure, the unkempt hair, the Hakuna Matata philosophy on which he seems to live on, each of these traits, one could argue, suggests a preoccupation with a greater purposes.

It suggests as much a simple lack of time to dwell on trivial matters like keeping his Body Mass Index in check or brushing his hair or get pressurized in a tricky situation, as much as it indicates of a particular paterfamilias sort of figure, who has a calming influence on his fraternity and that will remain like that come no matter what (although the odd three minute session in front of a mirror with a comb in hand could do no harm).

Perhaps also, individual sport would have been too self-centered for him, (how possibly could he survive a post match press conference without having to “thankzzz” every person in his back up staff, whatever the result of his match might have been, without referring to them as “boyzzz”).

He couldn’t have been a footballer either (that would require far too much running then Inzi would like), that leaves us with rugby, which you have to rule out because it’s quite possibly too physical.

And a lot of the remaining sports like motor sports for instance you simply have to rule out because they don’t have grandeur mid game breaks for food intake; in Inzi land, such things probably don’t even qualify as proper sports. But then, on that basis alone, one could possibly have ruled out everything but cricket.

But if you’re wondering, what exactly is my point then I shall proceed without further ado and get to it. You see, tomorrow, Inzi shall lead Pakistan away in Sri Lanka in the first test of a ridiculously small, two test match telefilm (you can’t call it a series when it’s this short). It will be Inzi’s 108th test, the 20th as captain.

No special occasion as such, but given, in recent times, I’ve felt a growing sense frustration at his relative absentmindedness and tactical scantiness when leading Pakistan, and that my patience has been thin on him, and that I’ve lashed out at every little mistake he’s made and criticized him for it, often even suggesting it has cost Pakistan matches, I thought it was time that I kept aside my grave, unsympathetic, analytical observer of the game hat and returned to my naïve, Panglossian fan roots for a while and do a good, old fashioned “why I love Inzi” post.

Perhaps this will reverse recent an uncharacteristic loss of form (scores from Inzi’s last 8 ODIs read 16, 8, 16, 49, 21, 24, 1, 12) and trigger the more familiar, “I so won’t get out without making an important score” mood he had not that long ago (scores from his last 5 tests read 53, 72, 109, 100*, 97, 1, 119). Here’s hoping.