Masti Point

Imran Khan is our equalizer. For a long while, he has been Pakistan’s sole beacon of pristine integrity on the international stage. He is a commoner’s compensation to incessant adversity. Post retirement from a magnificent cricketing career which was ordained with unparalleled all round performances, Imran has become the voice and soul for Pakistan’s poor, sick and underprivileged. Yet, despite Khan’s stellar achievements as a philanthropist and a political activist, it’s his cricketing exploits I wish to discuss.

In the very recent past, cricket’s premier website, ESPN cricinfo, undertook the monumental task of compiling an all time world eleven. Their task was to assemble a cricket team that combined freakish sporting skills with mind-numbing statistics. Some of the more distinguished former players and revered cricket authors were assigned this dream job. A valid question should be, was it really a Dream Job? Given the complexities involved in short listing eleven men from the list of greatest ever players to play the game it may as well be termed a very tough job. However, to someone like me who was sitting on the other side of the fence it was a dream job indeed.

Frankly speaking, the world jury, as they were labeled, came up with a team closest to perfection. I don’t mean to dwell on the jury’s selection criterion and their eventual decision but my only point of contention is Imran’s exclusion from the world eleven. Of course he got an honorable mention in the second eleven chosen by the same jury, yet I believe this was simply not good enough for a once in a lifetime cricketer like Imran. Let me clarify that I pose this argument being as neutral as I can be. Any tinge of bias towards Pakistan is only natural, but my feverish proposal to induct Khan in the all-time playing eleven (and I do not care if the jury had bumped Marshall or Lille out) is based on pertinent reasoning and not bias alone.

Imran was a unique, once in a lifetime cricketer. He was a mentor, a coach and a guide to an oft fractious team. Leading a group of men prone to infighting can be a nerve-wracking experience. Khan did it with unmatched serenity. Once, a doomed world cup campaign headed north was rotated 360 degrees east by his electrifying ‘cornered tiger’s’ speech. India, England and Australia were rolled over in the test arena. The then mighty West-Indians were nudged all the way to the finishing line. Test matches contested in the hostile cauldrons of Antigua, Trinidad and Barbados were termed as some of the most epic games played in the modern era.

The culmination of this fantastic episode in sport’s leadership annals was the incredible, come from behind world cup triumph in 1992. Imran, the skipper, had risen above all challenges, foreign and domestic. He had taken the best of the opposition teams head on, and pulverized them into submission.

Statistically too, he bears little comparison in the history of the game. For a few magical years, he was arguably the greatest fast bowler in the game and a middle order batsman par excellence. In the last fifty one test matches of his illustrious career, Imran averaged a monumental fifty with the bat and a miserly nineteen with the ball. Amongst the four great all round cricketer’s of the 1980′s (Hadlee, Kapil and Botham being the other three), Imran’s career statistics stand out. He ended with a test batting average of 38 and a bowling average of 22. Equally impressive were his one day statistics, averaging 33 with the bat and 26 with the ball. Name me another player in cricket history who can rival all round statistics of such ‘bradmanesque’ proportions?

And then of course, Imran could have been selected into the best cricket team of all-time purely on the basis of his charisma, looks and dignified persona. Tim de Lisle, the famed Wisden editor, once aptly remarked, ‘Imran should be made captain of an all-time eleven.’ Instead, he was assigned a consolatory position in a second eleven. Quite Reminiscent of an Olympic sprinter denied a gold medal by 0.001 of a second. Label me a biased-zealot or whatever you like; Imran is certainly amongst the top ten cricketers of all time.

He is our equalizer; the architect behind many a Pakistani triumph, on the field and off.