That which in its start is wonderful may not always remain so and in it's end might still remain wonderous but not wonderful, naye!
-I think I read this somewhere.
There have been so many who, as debutantes, impressed even the most severe critics, who believe that God made them to discourage others and then later as slightly less inexperienced beginners, gave them (the critics) the perfect chance to do their job. We had one Amay Khurasia who came in, and with Jadeja as his partner, claimed fifty runs very quickly, but later dissappeared behind layers and layers of curtains of newer, nacent talent. We have had many such people so far. It is therefore difficult for us to reach to conclusions just by seeing the first few cameos of our new men on the pitch.
Having been the regular sadist that a large number of our journalists are, particularly those who write in magazines like IT and Outlook and in newspapers like ToI, let me now be a more generous critic of Irfan Pathan, and in what I call my style, let me give you my opinion of our dear boy, Irfan.
Curly Hair, Sweet Face, Young Lad
It feels oddly comfortable to be writing about Irfan. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that he is just a couple of years older to me in age. Yes, that is it. It also, to a large extent, feels very foolish of me to write about Irfan just now. That is because, one, I am not myself a good cricketer of sorts at all, and two, even if I was, we have not seen much of Irfan to start writing reviews about him. But what I feel notwithstanding, I shall sit down to write on him anyways.
When you look at him, you have to give out a smile, don't you, O senior-in-age reader of mine? Does he not have a very sweet face of a little boy who loves to play? Those curly hair and that very original expression of determination that has a bewlidered air about itself…..
A cricketer is, however, not judged by how he looks. (West Indies and Sri Lanka know this very well, I daresay!). Then how is he judged? He is judged thus:
As a young man of nineteen years, Irfan has been very-very fortunate to have had received a little amount of training from Wasim Akram, the titan of fast bowling. You have newbies like Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee (newbies compared to Akram) who are just noisy shallow vessels compared to Akram, and you have to agree to that. If Sachin is to batting, then Akram is certainly to bowling. And Irfan trained under him for a good few months.
It is not so important how good you are as it is how good your teacher is. When you do have the basic capital, if you will, then being under a very good teacher, in its own way, makes you very good. And learning from Wasim has certainly made Irfan very good, at least from his recent performance in Australia and particularly in Pakistan.
Why you ask?
Irfan bowls to Taufeeq Umar. Umar has his lazy arrogance of looking at the bowler. He sees the ball pitch somewhere around the middle stump and sees it going towards the leg side. He hasn't seen any such ball not go a wide. So he moves across to allow the extra. The result is shocking.
Clang! His bails are off. Umar must go. Irfan has struck. The every so populous Irfan, a replica of whom resides in every lane of Umar's country, has fooled him completely. A ball that should have been a wide has made love to his stumps. Are batsmen from Pakistan so bad that a mere boy from a by-lane can dupe him so completely?
It was this wicket of his that shocked me completely and made me an instant fan of Irfan. I have not seen a new bowler bowl a ball that can fool a batsman so absolutely. You can't call this one a fluke. Or may be you can. But not this:
The experienced Youhana is standing on the batsman's crease. Irfan bowls. The ball pitches around the off-stump. Youhana, the eternal drive-bungler, puts his foot facing towards cover. The ball does not turn. In fact it nods at the middle stump and sets off to embrace. Youhana, for the first time, has to curse his leg. A pair of wicket-taking appendages…
For the second time. Youhana has sent Irfan on a leather hunt twice before. A ball looking of the same juicy kind comes forth. But it does something horrible on the way. Youhana must leave for his legs came in the way. The same question Umar faced, stands before Youhana.
Irfan has been bowling very well indeed, even when our bowlers were being shown their place and being treated as bowlers that a batsman uses to practice his run-making shots. Irfan held the fort a little longer and better than the others. One Monsieur Zaheer Khan had to learn a little from the young man, though I doubt if he did. Irfan overshadowed this speed-master of sorts completely. Bravo young lad!
Take cover, we fear, young Irfan is hear!
It looked very obvious from the way things were going at Lahore on the day of the final encounter between India and Pakistan that their batsmen were very-very worried about how to convert an Irfan delivery into good runs. He seemed to be just firing them at those guys and they were completely humbled before him that evening. It took a long while till anyone could actually start making some good hay out of his bowling. It was more like a bright-and-rainy day to have Zaheer and Balaji bowl with Irfan. On the one hand you have a nice bright sun to make hay under and on the other the rain that was drenching everything under it.
It is very drastic of me to generalize and quite in contrary to the sentence I started with. But one has to be generous. Batsmen do feel a little uncomfortable facing Irfan. Of course, very seasoned masters of the game, the likes of Inzamam-ul-Haq, take it as a very interesting question from a younger brother and answer it superbly well. But most of them feel insecure and are tongue-tied to reply to Irfan.
Give him a little experience, gentlemen of BCCI Board of Selectors, and be patient. He might go through ups and downs (I'm so clichéd!) and he may also be stupid at times. But if you let him out and face the fury of all kinds of batsmen, you will be doing nothing foolish, but in fact something smart- you'll be putting the shaped wet pot in the furnace to bake.
In Conclusion
Javed Miandad was a complete idiot in saying you have an Irfan in every lane of Pakistan. Or may be he wasn't. I'd rather he wasn't. Because then he'd statement would mean this: Batsmen from Pakistan are so mediocre, even a guy from some arbitrary by-lane can have them packing up.
Well think through this. You'd say I'm just another one of those who appreciate people for a momentary shining blitz of theirs. You can say that. Let us just hope you have to say that for as long as Irfan bowls. Let his momentary shining blitz repeat itself every time he comes out to play.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!
