Good news, the Pakistanis are in town

Comment is Free, The Guardian, 4 July

Now that England are out and the World Cup is nearing its climax, perhaps there’ll be a re-focusing on what is supposed to be the country’s traditional summer pastime. In recent weeks the media has been so preoccupied with the football that when the cricket season’s prime attraction, the Pakistanis, flew in to begin a two month tour, there was little fanfare. Which is a pity, because these Pakistanis play gripping cricket.

Since they came from behind to draw a tough series with India in early 2005, they’ve beaten England and India at home and Sri Lanka away. During this period, a crop of cricketers in their mid twenties – Younis Khan, Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal, Danish Kaneria, and the younger Mohammad Asif – have blossomed into Test stars. The team play with flash and fire but also grit, patience and sometimes daunting fearlessness. They’ve made a habit over the last 18 months of recovering from apparently hopeless positions. They boast diverse skills, styles and personalities, but have played as a unit. Within the squad, there’s a solidarity, a habit of mutual support and respect, for which past Pakistani teams were not renowned.

The tour will be Inzamam ul-Haq’s farewell English performance, and that in itself makes it one of the sporting summer’s few genuinely not-to-be-missed attractions. When I think of what’s beautiful in cricket, I think of Inzamam. The slow gait and the whiplash wrists, the beguiling fusion of bulk and delicacy. In a sports world throbbing with hyper-activity and clenched faced ambition, there’s a a relief, a kind of emollient refreshment, in Inzamam’s slothful demeanor and sleepy visage. The contradiction between the non-chalant surface and the underlying fierceness of purpose is only apparent; what makes Inzamam Inzamam is the way the two accent each other. And by the way, against England last autumn he scored two hundreds and three fifties in five visits to the crease.

For the home side, last summer’s Ashes victory – a greater achievement than anything the country’s footballers have managed in recent times – now seems a distant memory. An unfancied Sri Lankan team drew the recent Test series, then hammered England in the one dayers 5-0. Of course, the Ashes winners have been knocked out of shape by a series of injuries to key players and the long-term absence of captain Michael Vaughan. Still, the series remains unpredictable, partly because the Pakistanis are still inconsistent, and partly because England do have the talent to make a fight of it, especially if Flintoff is fit and finds his best form.

The animosity that marked relations between between the two sides in the late eighties and early nineties is now a thing of the past. It helps that reverse swing, treated by the British media as some kind of dastardly subterfuge when unleashed by the Pakistanis in 1992, is now a proud part of England’s cricketing arsenal, a crucial element in last year’s triumph over the Australians.

In recent years, media focus has shifted to the Pakistani fans, whose behaviour at English grounds has been criticised as over-exuberant and aggressive. Of course, the vast majority of these fans are actually British born and bred. In 2001, then England captain Nasser Hussein blasted them (and their Indian counterparts) for not supporting England. His comments recalled the infamous ‘cricket test’ posed to immigrants a decade earlier by Norman Tebbitt (”which side do they cheer for…?”). Tebbit’s right-wing political agenda never entered Hussain’s head, but his approach to sporting partisanship was nonetheless simplistic and restrictive. It was also made to look decidedly naïve when, within a matter of days, first Oldham and then Bradford experienced violent conflict between the local south Asian population and both police and far-right gangs.

The English cricket establishment remains uneasy with the mass chants of “Pakistan zindabad!” that will echo round the grounds this summer, but it’s the enthusiasm of the Pakistan fans that makes the tour a money-spinner, and will also help propel cricket back to centre-stage after the drawn out football season. How the larger social context will impinge remains to be seen.

Inevitably there’ll be comment on the Pakistani cricketers’ religiosity (when it comes to professions of faith, only US sportsmen are as demonstrative). The TV cameras sweeping the crowds at the matches will pick out bearded men and women with their heads covered. But whatever role religion may play among the current crop of Pakistani cricketers, it’s important to remember that what makes Pakistani cricket distinct is its cricket culture.

In England this summer, there will be more than 140 first class matches, plus more than 240 limited overs games played between first class sides. In comparison, during the most recent Pakistani domestic season, there were only 74 first class and 56 limited overs contests (in a country where cricket has no rival as a spectator sport). In England, there are more than 400 professional cricketers employed by the 18 first class counties. In Pakistan, no cricketer makes a living exclusively by playing domestic cricket. Street cricket, however, is ubiquitous and intense. While kids in England were watching football on the telly, their counterparts in Pakistan were bowling and batting in whatever space they could find and with whatever implements came to hand (and also, when and where they could, watching the football). For most aspirant Pakistani cricketers, the route from the streets to the stadiums is circuitous and littered with obstacles. But it can also sometimes be a very short leap: Pakistan is famous for blooding its talent young and many a future star has found himself propelled into the international arena after the briefest schooling in domestic first-class cricket. As a result, more of the elan of street cricket – the hustle, the improvisatory spirit – survives in the Pakistani game. Combine that with sophistication of technique and discipline, and you have a team that’s both competitive and entertaining.

Speaking personally, it will be a pleasure to return to the majesty of Test cricket after the frenzy of the football. The World Cup has been engrossing, but also hyped beyond endurance. The coming England-Pakistan series seems all the more attractive for having been comparatively under-promoted.