Misbah the saviour

Author:

Sir: Misbah-ul-Haq, the resilient captain of the sinking Pakistan ship, is the saviour once again in the 3rd One day International (ODI) against West Indies. It’s now routine for him to come when the team is asphyxiating and resuscitate it nine times out of ten. Still, he is criticized by the masses for a variety of reasons. Many of his critics don’t realize that in spite of the fact that the current Pakistan cricket team has an extremely poor batting line-up, he is the leading scorer in ODIs this year and ranks number eight in the ICC rankings. His career ODI batting average is the second best in Pakistan’s history, only bettered by Zaheer Abbas. People always criticize him for slow batting while forgetting the difficult circumstances he always arrives in at the crease. Even then his career ODI strike rate is comparable to Inzamam and Mohammad Yousuf and is better than the likes of Hafeez, Aamir Sohail and Ahmed Shahzad. At the age of 39, he is fit and diving around, taking good catches and inducing run-outs. Many blame his defensive and riskless captaincy and maybe they are right, but he has glued a volatile team together and has produced results. His captaincy record is also noteworthy, losing only 19 of the 48 ODIs he has captained so far. He may not be as charismatic as M S Dhoni and as versatile as Mike Hussey, but he takes responsibility and values his wicket immensely, a rarity in our current side. Our nation’s romantic disposition means a tendency to love flamboyance while forgetting the hard work and doggedness of dedicated individuals.

DR SAJID HAMEED

Larkana