2024 isn’t 1992, Babar Azam no Imran Khan, rain sinks Pakistan
Rain should not intervene. Team A needs to beat Team B. Team C should lend a helping hand. The Net Run Rate should remain in control. On such accidents of fate and variables have hinged Pakistan's fortunes in recent years. But hope springs eternal; the faith in miracles is unshakeable, till the last ball is bowled, till the precise moment they are mathematically out of the tournament.
It has become so routine for Pakistan that such emotions and attributions have lost novelty and romance. It has turned into a well-worn cliche. Pakistan, in the last group game, were on the brink, praying for divine intervention. So they wanted the rains to ease and the sun to shine in Florida. They hoped Ireland would beat the USA so that they could stay alive in the World Cup. That was not to be. Rain, and consequently, a wet outfield meant the game between USA and Ireland was washed away without a single ball being bowled. Pakistan, with one to go, were knocked out. The one-time World Champions had failed to clear the group phase.
Pakistan's faith with miracle and destiny originates from the 1992 World Cup, a similarly rain-affected but thrilling tournament where Imran Khan’s men escaped with a point after being bowled out for 74. The point would later ferry them to the semifinals. The hair-raising comeback of the “cornered tigers”.
But just because it happened once, it cannot happen every time. Sport is too serious a business for random recurrences. For fortune and destiny to align and bail them out from every tight corner every single time. Rather, in reality, the team was destined for a premature exit, not in the first round perhaps, from the moment the selectors picked the team. There were more cracks in the squad than the holes in the depleted ozone layer. Batting lacked explosive power. In three games, they struck only 13 sixes and 19 fours. Running between wickets is a parody on Virat Kohli.
So much so that they would have been inadequate to meet the demands of even new-age ODI cricket, let alone the soaring demands of T20 batting. The sluggish nature of the pitches in the US seemed to mask this flaw of theirs. Pakistan, in fact, got to play on two of the better pitches in the US leg—the Dallas one possessed hardly any demons, and the New York variant against India was not as fiendish as some of the other ones in the venue.
It reflects so much of their colossal ineptitude that Babar Azam and Co failed to surpass India’s 119, imploding from 80 for 3, and that Shaheen Shah Afridi and his three horsemen could not whip up an apocalyptic storm to defend 159 against USA. Mohammed Amir still has the fingers to tickle magic, but in the super over, his nerves and precision snapped. He flung in the perfect yorker in the fatal Super Over, but his wides down the leg-side would have required a packed cordon leg-slippers to stop.
Still, it was highly conceivable that they would let the ball burst through their greasy palms. The fielding, especially in the slips, would make club cricketers blush. The catches they spilled, the half-chances they missed, the run-outs they didn’t effect, the runs they sieved through their palms should haunt them more than the miracles that did not manifest. Their rich legacy of spinners has been lost in the sands of time, as distant a heritage as West Indies’s lost fast-bowling stocks.
Some chaos was only expected. The concept of consummate march to the podium does not exist for Pakistan cricket. The odd fumble and stumble, the historic volatility, has only enhanced their lovability. But this time, even the chaos contained no fun or charm. If any, it only induced a numb ennui. They had long lost the thrilling madness about them. Even their implosions are less fascinating these days.
Even if Pakistan had somehow sneaked into the Super Eight, a title tilt was beyond their reaches.The Class of Babar 24 was not so much of a team as a collection of distracted, disenchanted talents, immersed in their own world. Even as charismatic a captain as Imran Khan would have struggled to ignite them to a winning group.
Imran’s 1992 bunch had a dazzling array of young match-winners who he guided, cajoled and howled to produce their best. Babar’s does not. In the end, the diagnosis was as simple as that. His team possessed ordinary talents, taking two or three out, performing ordinarily. Unless they come out from the dreamland of miracles, the dependence on accidents of fate, Pakistan would never fulfil their cricketing destiny.
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