Daily Times

It is good to learn that Misbah-ul-Haq has finally begun ruminating over his retirement plans. Hardly a bolt from the blue. Cricketers in the Subcontinent seem to hate the word ‘retirement’, and continue to test their ageing loins until the bones go completely off the boil. We are teemed with such examples: Javed Miandad is one illustrious name that rapidly springs to mind. It took Javed a string of low scores and repeatedly poor display of reflexes to hang up his boots. Waqar Younis lived on borrowed time before finally realising that his performance charts are bumping along the bottom. Afridi lumbered for an extra five years in my estimate, before coming to terms with his often ill-timed and untrustworthy power hitting.

Misbah has relatively been more sensible. Better to exit with grace than to have yourself kicked in the teeth. Count your blessings Misbah! One bad tour and the press will bust your reputation. Misbah-ul-Haq is by far the best thing that happened to Pakistan cricket over the past decade. Bursting onto the international canvas in his early twenties; he was robbed of at least ten good years of prolific run-making. For that we have no one to blame, as the middle order duo of Inzamam and Yousuf ruled the roost with aplomb, denying Misbah a bash in the centre.

Years ago, courtesy my teenage engagements with state level junior cricket in Pakistan, I was often receptive to the tales of a budding Misbah, gradually coming of age in the first class cricket circles of the country. While Misbah lacked the sizzling, free flowing stroke play of Yousuf, and the calmness with which Inzamam picked his runs; he was still a cream of a different league. A creature of habit, he was a workhorse, endowed with impenetrable defences, and had an answer to all the awkward angles and swishing of a cricket ball. Subscribing to Bradman’s advice: “stay at the wicket and runs will follow you”, Misbah’s bat often reeled off runs from irrecoverable situations. Despite his armchair critics panning him for his abrasive “tuktuk”, it is to Misbah’s credit that he has frequently rescued Pakistan’s batting from miserable conditions. It must be noted that Misbah’s tenure in Pakistan’s woozy middle order was doubly difficult, given a top order that recurrently made a heavy weather of even the lousiest of bowling. It is precisely for these reasons that I rate Misbah as our best middle order batsman after Javed Miandad.

Let us now take a dim view of Misbah’s statistics with the bat and blow the gaff. In a total of 72 test matches, Misbah has piled up close to 5,000 runs with an eye-popping batting average of around 46. In a similar effort, Misbah’s wand has fetched over 5,000 runs in 162 ODI outings, with an equally impressive average of 43. And here is the rub: almost half of those 10,000 runs have been dished out in the presence of a turbulent batting order. If my statistics are roughly correct, in close to a hundred test and one-day innings combined, Misbah was found battling himself out of niggling bowling conditions and eventually taking his team out of the red zone. Interestingly, despite his Test match composure, Misbah was also known to change gears, letting his wide shoulders swing free, and muscle the most skillful of bowling miles into the stands. His unconstrained big hitting in T20 format has yielded a batting average of 38, in nearly 40 games on the international circuit.

To me, Misbah has been the relentless modern day run accumulator; the mainstay of an otherwise shaky batting lineup. In a nutshell, he has been Pakistan’s formidable reply to Indian Rahul Dravid. It is surely sad to see him go, as Pakistan’s middle order minus Misbah will most likely be on tenterhooks. But, at 42, he must resign soon after the Caribbean tour, or else, he would make an exhibition of an otherwise gutsy cricketing career.

The writer is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge and an economist. He has also played for Pakistan’s junior cricket team