Deep Backward Point

Blog against the machine.

Tag: Javed Miandad

June 10, 2011

Miandad as a Microcosm of Pakistan

Javed Miandad encompasses almost everything that makes Pakistan the most entertaining team of them all. Rob Bagchi and Rob Smyth recall one of the great innings of all time, where Miandad scored 200 not out of a total of 311:

Wickets continued to fall at the other end: 155 for five, 224 for six, 227 for seven. Then Javed added 43 for the eighth wicket with Robin Hobbs – who was out first ball. It was an astonishing partnership, with Javed facing every delivery for eight consecutive overs. His plan was simple: wait for the field to come up for the fifth delivery, hit over the top for a boundary, and then gleefully steal a single from the last ball. It was a delicious game of cat and mouse, except the mouse was terrorising the cat.

This innings on its own is a microcosm for Pakistani cricket. Including how the innings ended.

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February 15, 2011

The 2nd-Most Awesome Thing Ever Said About Javed Miandad

 

Miandad and More

Miandad and More

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Sunil Gavaskar’s wife. She was once asked who her favorite batsman was. Here’s what she said:

 

If I wanted someone to bat for my pleasure, I would ask my husband. If I needed someone to bat for my life, I would ask Javed Miandad.

This captures much of what I feel about many things. For example, the iPhone (or the Mac) for pleasure over Android (or Linux) for my life.

∞

This is only the second-most awesome thing anyone has ever said about Javed Miandad. The most awesome was Rashid Latif in Outlook magazine. Latif claimed that, sure, Miandad fixed matches. But only to win them.

Which is patently ridiculous, but awesome all the same. Fixing a match to win it is worse than fixing to lose, because fixing to win means that all the other times you weren’t being paid, you weren’t putting in one hundred percent.

∞

Remember Outlook’s series of match-fixing exposés? They were Tehelka before Tehelka. They were News of the World before News of the World.

Manoj Prabhakar, for his part, claimed that Kapil Dev fixed a match. This brought about the second-most famous incident of cricket related crying, when Kapil cried for Karan Thapar on BBC.

∞

The most famous incident of cricket related crying was Vinod Kambli at Eden Gardens at the World Cup semi-finals.

The rest of the country would have been crying with him, if they had looked up from the burning effigies in their backyard.

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