Historically, Pakistan cricket has been defined by its unpredictability. The talent has always been there, but there have been moments of madness interspersed with moments of magic at fairly regular intervals. And it was one such moment of madness that, paradoxically, gave Pakistan the man who defines predictability.
In 2010, when Pakistan went off on its fateful tour of England, Misbah-ul-haq Khan Niazi was not even among the 40 probables shortlisted for the Test team. Despite an excellent first-class career, the middle-order batsman had been cast aside.
Tariq Saeed, a leading journalist and radio broadcaster, recollects meeting a distraught Misbah outside the National Cricket Academy in Lahore, where he hinted at retirement.
Saeed recalls Misbah saying:
If I am not even good enough to be among the top 40 cricketers in the country, I might as well call it a day.
Just a couple of months later, everything had changed.
Salman Butt, the young captain and his two best bowlers, Mohammed Asif and young Mohammed Amir, had been caught in a spot-fixing sting, and the Pakistan Cricket Board, looking to make a clean break, decided to anoint Misbah as the new skipper. It was, like a lot of decisions made at the time, clutching at straws. He was 36 at the time and had played only 19 Tests in 9 years. For all intents and purposes it was a desperate, short-term measure.
Seven years later, as Misbah bows out, he is Pakistan’s most successful Test captain, and the decision to elevate him appears almost prescient – the one good thing that happened under the much-maligned, then PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.
He wasn’t a popular choice, by any means, due largely to his infamous scoop shot off Joginder Sharma that handed India the first ever ICC World T20 crown. People forgot the fact that he was largely responsible for getting them into the final and in a position to win it in the first place. The blame for every loss, every draw was laid at his doorstep.
The hashtag – #MisbahsFault – became a thing as the new captain ended up a convenient scapegoat for the country.
Handed a team shorn of its most potent weapons, and forced to play all its home games in its adopted home in the UAE, Misbah invented a new style of captaincy, largely attritional and heavily reliant on the spinners.
The batsmen were expected to slowly amass a massive first innings total and put the visiting team under scoreboard pressure, while the attack, led first by the wily off-spinner Saeed Ajmal and then, once his action was deemed illegal, by leg-spinner Yasir Shah, wore the opposition down slowly and steadily.
It worked like a charm and Pakistan eventually became the number one Test team in the world following a cathartic tour of England in 2016, where they buried the ghosts of 2010, to draw 2-2.
It had been a long journey to the top – from the cricketing backwaters of Mianwali, a town known for big, strong men and little else, Misbah was never encouraged to play cricket by his father, a teacher, who believed that sport needed to take a backseat to studies. After he passed away in 1988, though, his mother did support his passion and Pakistan owes a debt of gratitude to her.
He moved away to Faisalabad to complete his college, and there, he excelled in tape ball cricket. Studies were still paramount and he went on to complete his MBA from Lahore.
Misbah made his first-class debut at the age of 24, rather late by Pakistani standards, and soon went on to make his Test debut in Auckland in 2001.
At that time, the team was blessed with an abundance of middle-order talent in the form of Inzamam, Yousuf Youhana (later Mohammed Yousuf) and Younis Khan and he was soon cast aside. He did play sporadically, with two superb unbeaten hundreds in India standing out, but was never considered good enough to get a long run.
His inclusion in the Pakistan team for the inaugural World T20 in South Africa at the expense of Mohammed Yousuf was controversial as Misbah was a year older than the man he had replaced. He showed his worth, playing some superb knocks in tough chases – against Australia and then New Zealand, as well as the two games against India, only for that one unfortunate scoop of poor judgement to ruin an otherwise faultless outing.
As Test captain, Misbah re-invented himself, choosing caution over exuberance. Once, during a Test match against Zimbabwe in Harare, where he once again played a heroic knock, albeit in a losing cause, he told this writer, “These Zimbabwean bowlers are much easier to hit for six than to block. I wish I could hit out. If only I wasn’t playing for Pakistan...” That summed up his approach – cricket was a duty, a responsibility towards his country and he would perform it, even at the cost of losing fans. It would have been much easier to go for flamboyance, which Pakistani fans are much more forgiving of – just ask Shahid Afridi – but he chose to tread the tougher path.
Having beaten England in the UAE in 2015, he could have been forgiven for calling it a day. Fans and media alike were expecting him to give the tour of England a miss. But he decided he owed it to his nation to lead them on their most difficult assignment. Eventually, it would prove to be his crowning glory. The tours of New Zealand and Australia that followed were markedly less successful, but nobody could ever accuse Misbah of shying away from responsibility.
Now, his duty fulfilled, the man who will be 43 on the 28th of this month, will walk away into the Caribbean sunset. But Pakistan will hope that he continues to guide its cricket. After all, as he himself says, “I relax by watching cricket. It is my life.”
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