The Omniblogus - Part One

It begins, like they all do, with 1992.

I had recently moved into a new neighborhood. It was my summer vacations. I didn't know anyone there. So in the afternoon, i went out on the street. There was a game of cricket in progress. My uncle asked the older boys to let me play. i was wearing a replica of the shirt worn by the pakistan team in the world cup earlier that year. i was nine. they asked me to field at third man, and called me world cup.
my cricket playing career moved little further throughout the rest of my life - no one needed to know my name, no one wanted me in their side, and i was always at third man.

i couldn't hope to bat; a fact i blame it on whoever taught me how to bat when i was really young. as a left hander the right handed grip imposed upon me meant that i was forever trapped being a leg-pay-lapparroo type rightie rather than a cover-drive-smoking leftie.

as for bowling, let's just say that most batsmen i got out would say 'i didn't realise it would get to me so slowly...' the people to blame here are wasim and waqar, since because of them i was obsessed with being a fast bowler. unfortunately if i couldn't bowl - for some inexplicable reason - anything which could be classified as fast. i would have had the sense to see that and move onto something new if those two hadn't made being a fast bowler such an essential aspect of being a badass.
i realised the only talent i had was at sledging, and being a crooked umpire.

i also realised - which you may also be able to after reading the above excuses - that like every pakistani, i was prone to blaming every personal problem on nefarious forces beyond the realm of my control.
the sad truth was that i could never ever play cricket.

but that didn't mean i couldn't love it.

10CC - Dreadlock Holiday
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i was part of a generation - a generation that first tasted cricket on that wondrous world cup of 1992. it was like watching irreversible, the ending of the movie came at the beginning. my first taste of cricket was at the top. inevitably, the only way to go was down.
but of course, pakistan being pakistan, the journey went down, but it went every where else in between as well.

bitch slapping the poms with the 'dark art',

getting high and tying one day matches in the caribbean,

learning what a bookie meant in bangalore,

scraping past the aussies in karachi,

the ball refusing to scrape through symcox's stumps in faisalabad,

the first time i kissed a man (saeed anwar on the tv screen following that innings)

all out to kumble,

invincible in sharjah

and indecipherable elsewhere,

watching the birth of the batsman-wicketkeeper extraordinaire in a heartbreaker in hobart,

watching the ultimate houdini by razzaq,

realising that jayasuria can hit the fastest 50 and still lose in singapore,

and grounds in nairobi becoming part of folklore...

then, a seminal event took place.

in 1999 world cup, pakistan looked set to conquer the world. the loss to bangladesh meant that we had even satisfied the bookies' hunger.

but then the world came crashing down.

the narrative of pakistani cricket changed course. in ancient times, entire civilizations would die out if a river changed course. now, pakistan too, became to transform.
slowly, but surely, pakistan began to change.

it has often been argued that the pakistani identity - surely one of the most fraught concepts of contemporary times - is best crystallized in the game of cricket, and embodied by the cricket team.

that identity was rapidly coming under threat.

[End of Part One]

(Next Part - Tangent One: The Man U fan)