Whenever I played against Pakistan I would wonder which team would turn up. By this I do not mean whether Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka would emerge from the dressing room instead, but I always felt you never quite knew what you were going to get from this talented bunch of cricketers. I always felt they were fighting themselves as much as they were fighting the opposition. If it came down to pure talent then Pakistan should be top of the tree. Combine discipline and attitude with their talent then you have Australia. India have also climbed the ranks recently and they too used to be quite a fractious, divisive unit.
I am a big advocate of cricket being an individual sport. When you bat and bowl you are competing one-on-one with your opponent. As a bowler I need the fielders around me to help out but my quest for glory is in the undoing of the batsman. When I bat it is me against the bowler. Where the team aspect comes in to the game is in the sum of its parts: the team score. The closest game to cricket is golf's Ryder Cup. Here you have individual duels going on against opponents but these single acts count towards the team score.
The team aspect to cricket can make or break results. Getting along or not getting along is also key. Imagine yourself in your work place. Do you get along with everyone who operates there? No. Do you have some people you share a cigarette with or have lunch with? Perhaps. Some you may socialise with after work and some you would not. Team sport is no different to the work place in dealing with different characters. Where the successful teams overcome this is in their ability to roll with success and failure: to enjoy your teammate's success and then to commiserate with their failure. In unsuccessful teams these two elements are swapped around.
Pakistan tend to travel by roller coaster more than most. My first experience against them was the inspired leadership of Imran Khan in the 1992 World Cup. Imran is a hero of mine and he gave me 10 stitches above my right eye with one of those missile-seeking inswinger bouncers when I was 18. I asked for no anaesthetic so I could remember it even more. I wore the scar as a reminder of my hero and also as a reminder not to get hit again.
The team of '92 contained star players; Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Inzamam ul-Haq, Mushtaq Ahmed but were it not for the heavens opening up against England in their pool match and gifting two points to Pakistan, they would have failed to make the semi-finals. From Inzamam taking Chris Harris to the cleaners in the dying throes of the semi-final to the Miandad and Imran partnership that created a competitive total in the final, it always seemed Pakistan were destined to lift the trophy.
What Imran had managed to do was instil a belief in his players so strong that their common goal was to win the tournament. But to believe you can do it is another thing and it takes a good leader to combine these elements. Individually, Pakistan have gone on to produce players of the calibre of Inzy, Waqar Younis, Mushtaq, Saqlain Mustaq, Mohammad Yousuf, Younus Khan and the underrated Saeed Anwar. But the king of them all is Akram.
He is what I would call a cricketer's cricketer. He is someone who can do things with a ball that we mere mortals dream about. When you know the intricacies of the game and how tough things are to execute then you really appreciate how good Akram was. For people sitting at home watching him bowl a 140kph reverse swinging away swinger from around the wicket that rips out some poor batsman's off-stump, they may greet it with a "well bowled". To the trained eye it is a piece of poetry and so was he. The explosive all-rounder would no doubt have flourished in Twenty20 cricket.
Pakistan won the T20 World Cup in England last summer and would have won the event in 2007 in South Africa had Misbah ul-Haq continued hitting the ball straight, as he had done beautifully up to that point, and not skied one at a crucial stage of the final with India. The roller-coaster nature of T20 suits Pakistan. There is not too much thinking involved in T20: see the ball, hit the ball. Fielding does let them down but their bowlers are wicket takers and wickets in T20 are like gold dust. This is why Pakistan will always be top of the T20 tree. The game is unpredictable and so are they.
Since March there has been no international cricket in Pakistan and that looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. It is sad because the youngsters need to see the game. They need to be able to go to the grounds and see, smell and hear what it means to be a Test cricketer. They will watch it on TV and still play games on the street but the youth have to be around the game and with no inter- national tours this will make it tough for them to produce players.
Aspiring to be an international cricketer is seen as a way out for those less fortunate in Pakistan. We may well see more Imrans, Akrams and Mushys emerge from these tough times but one thing is for sure, we should be giving the Pakistan players as much support as the cricket community can give. You have to remember that these players make their living from this and also remember that sport is a tool to heal and unite. Do not use it to ignite.
When in late December I was informally asked by Sundar Raman, the chief executive of the Indian Premier League (IPL), to put my name forward for the 2010 tournament I felt I still had a good two years left in this creaking body of mine to deliver something to myself and the fans of the game. Until then I had not really considered going down this route, but when asked by a man of Raman's standing then it is something you listen to. If I did not think I could have played to my own standards I would not have gone down the official registering process.
I was excited by the challenge awaiting me in the IPL. But with one very ill-judged tweet by Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, my dream was shattered. He claimed I was sacked by the rebel Indian Cricket League because of match fixing. If Modi really had any concerns about my probity as a sportsman he could have called me at any time or instructed any of his executives to do the same. He chose not to. Instead he chose to make his allegation in public and to repeat it in public. I have never rigged a match.
There was no way the IPL would then allow my name to go forward to auction. This is not about me missing out on a potential IPL contract. It is about ensuring my cricketing achievements do not lay in ruins. So instead of concentrating on the game I love I now find I have no alternative but to sue Modi for libel. The legal route I now embark on with Modi is not one I undertake lightly. I doubt that my case against such an important man will cause him to lose much sleep. For me it is the centre of my universe.
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