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Friday, December 31, 2010

Afridi praise for Razzaq


Shahid Afridi praised the all-round skills of Abdul Razzaq after Pakistan clinched victory over New Zealand in the final T20 international in Christchurch.
The Pakistan captain claimed four wickets as his side rolled over the Kiwis for just 80 as they pursued a target of 184, but Afridi instead paid tribute to stalwart Razzaq.
The veteran of 248 ODIs struck 34 from 11 balls and then took 3-13 as the Kiwis crumbled to give the tourists some consolation for losing the first two matches of the series.
"He's a matchwinner, I've always seen him as one," Afridi said. "In the past there have been some games where victory looked unlikely, but he was able to see us through."
Afridi insisted the victory will do the team a power of good after a tumultuous year both on and off the field.

Morale

"All the boys need is confidence and this game today shows what Pakistan is about and what talent we have," he added.
"Yes we lost the series but today's win was good in order to keep our morale high."
New Zealand captain Ross Taylor was one of the top four in the Kiwi batting line-up who all got ducks in the match, and he admitted there was no coming back from that.
"Pakistan batted very well, put a very good total on the board," he said. "But when your top four batsmen get out for nothing, it's a pretty bad taste.
"We wanted to go out and win the series 3-0 after what's happened over the last few months but Pakistan bowled really well too.
"We were looking forward to a good start given how they started, but the way Razzaq and Afridi bowled it was just outstanding."

ROSS TAYLOR AND SHAHID AFRIDI IN CONTRASTING MOODS AFTER CHRISTCHURCH T20


Despite winning the three match T20 series against Pakistan, New Zealand captain Ross Taylor was a disappointed man as his side crashed to an embarrassing 103 runs defeat to the rampaging men in green in the third T20 match played at the AIM Stadium in Christchurch.
The massive win tumbled many records on the way, most of them causing embarrassment to the hosts who crashed to their lowest score in the shortest format of the game.
Besides, the defeat margin was the biggest in a T20 match involving two test playing members of ICC.
It also ended Pakistan’s woeful recent run of six consecutive defeats in the instant format of the game, Shahid Afridi’s men ended the poor run in style by a record breaking win.
The unpredictable Pakistanis have their own way of rebounding in style from a sequence of poor results; they ended their 9 match ODI losing streak by thumping the Bangladeshis in an Asia Cup fixture in Sri Lanka earlier in the year.
After the defeat Taylor admitted that his team were second best on the day and it was a big disappointment since the squad was harbouring hopes of a three-zero whitewash against the former T20 World Champions.
"We wanted to win the series 3-0 after what's happened over the last few months," Taylor said, "and it's disappointing to put out a performance like that in front of a pretty good crowd."
Chasing a stiff victory target of 184, the Black Caps were blown away by a Pakistani bowling attack that was without the feared fast bowling duo of Shoaib Akhtar and Umar Gul.
The hosts were dismissed for 80 runs in 15.5 overs, and at one stage were 3 for 4; the top four batsmen in the order were all dismissed for ducks. "It's a very disappointing way to end the series … when your four top batsmen get out for nothing it's pretty tough chasing a total”, said Taylor who had taken over the captaincy after Daniel Vettori was ruled out due to an injury.
"The pitch changed a little bit but the way Abdul Razzaq and [Shahid] Afridi bowled was just outstanding," he concluded.
On the other hand the Pakistani captain Shahid Afridi who recorded career best bowling figures of 4 for 14 in 2.5 overs was pleased with the performance of his team.
His rich wicket haul also meant that he became the first player to reach the milestone of 50 Twenty20 wickets.
"This is the talent of Pakistan but we should be consistent," Afridi said. "We're trying to make a team combination before the World Cup (in February). I know we lost the series but this was a big win for us to keep our morale high."
The New Zealand think tank is now concentrating on turning the tables in two match test series that starts next Friday; the Black Caps had a decent series in India where they played out two draws out of three tests against the number one ranked test team in the world.
However, they have not recorded many wins in the longest format of the game either; only 2 of the last 19 tests have gone in their favour.
They would be boosted by the fact that one of those wins came against Pakistan at Dunedin in the first match of the three matches series held last year.
The Pakistani team in the tests would be led by middle-order batsman Misbah Ul Haq. The right hander led the team to two honorable draws against the South Africans in the UAE last month.

Cricket: Most memorable moments of 2010


When you think of a year gone by, one surely thinks of the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, for a Pakistan cricket fan there were plenty of ugly cricket moments during 2010, which many have claimed has been the worst year ever in Pakistan cricket.
For now, let’s forget about the bad and the ugly, and let’s just concentrate on the good. The good that we have witnessed on the cricket field.
There have been plenty of moments to cherish in the year gone by, and here are my personal Top 10 performances from 2010.
10. Six on debut
Pakistan has never been short of quality pacers and they have always been known for the young fast bowlers they unleash on the world. This one though was an exception. At 32, no one really expected what Tanvir Ahmed showcased on his test debut against South Africa in Abu Dhabi. Six wickets in an innings is a significant achievement; on a dead wicket it’s an even bigger one. But to achieve that on debut, including wickets in your first and second overs in Test cricket, and to get scalps of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, and Hashim Amla in your first outing is something that Tanvir Ahmed will always be remembered for.
9. Finally a 200
There are two performances that can qualify under this title, but one of them deserves a much higher rank on my list. When Jacques Kallis flicked Jaidev Unadkat to the fine leg boundary, he reached the score of 200 for the first time ever in his Test career. The way AB DeVilliers, his partner at the crease, and the rest of the South African team in the dressing room celebrated showed what the feat meant to Kallis and to the team. It was a huge rabbit that had been disturbing Kallis’ back, and it’s finally off it. The significance of the feat lies in the fact that Kallis had played over 140 Test matches, batted over 240 times, scored over 11,000 runs, and hit 37 centuries in a career spanning 15 years before he hit his first double century!
8. The Triple Nelsen
The only triple century in test cricket in 2010 was scored by Chris Gayle. And what a triple century it was! Gayle single handedly demolished Sri Lanka in a brutal innings of 333. His innings came off only 437 deliveries and included 34 boundaries and 9 sixes. Gayle has played a number of whirlwind knocks in all formats of the game, but this innings is surely one of his most memorable ones in my book.
7. When you can’t beat them, join them
With his ability to take wickets slightly on the wane, Harbhajan Singh became quite vocal about the dead pitches being prepared for Test matches. Once he realised that his rants were falling on deaf ears, Bhajji decided that it might be best to stop complaining about the lack of wickets, and start making the most of the dead pitches by scoring some runs. He first notched up a 69 in the 1st innings of the 1st Test against New Zealand. He followed that up with 115 in the next innings – his first ever Test hundred. To make sure that the ton was not regarded as a fluke, Bhajji returned in the 2nd Test with another century – this time an unbeaten 111. It’s widely considered that batsmen peak at the age of 30 and Harbhajan Singh has done exactly that.
6. Three in three on Day 1
Hatricks are always memorable and fun to watch in cricket. There weren’t many this year, but the one that will probably remain in my mind is Peter Siddle’s hatrick on the first day of the Ashes series that is currently going on. Returning to test cricket after a back injury, Siddle had a lot to prove. And he managed to do it by snaring a well set Alistair Cook, Matt Prior, and Stuart Broad in successive deliveries to set up the series in the most emphatic fashion. It was truly the best way to kick off an Ashes series.
5. Total knockout
This one is a nightmare for Pakistani fans, but when looking at it purely from a cricket fan’s point of view, Michael Hussey’s unbeaten 60 in the semi final of the World T20against Pakistan is the best ever T20 innings in my books. Since the days of Wasim and Waqar, I have never seen anyone take a game away from a team the way Hussey took the game away from Pakistan. His 60 took a mere 24 deliveries and when he came to the crease Australia still required 87 runs to win in 7.3 overs with half the team back in the pavilion. It looked impossible even when 47 runs were required of the final 3 overs, and even when 18 were required of the final over. For Hussey that day, impossible was nothing.
4. 24 years later
When England won the 4th Test against Australia at the MCG in the ongoing Ashes series, they also retained the Ashes and did what no other English team had done in 24 years – win the Ashes on Australian soil. The celebrations at the end of that Test will be etched in my mind for a long time to come – the way the England team celebrated just shows how much the victory means to them. And we can all admit that there is that extra pleasure that we all derive out of watching Australia lose.
3. Two fat ladies
No one could have imagined in their wildest dreams that Pakistan would beat Australia in a Test match, let alone bowl them out for 88. Pakistan did both, and how?! It was one of the sweetest ever Test victories for Pakistan in the 2nd Test against Australia at Leeds.
It took Pakistan 15 years to beat Australia in a Test match, which made the victory even sweeter. The batsmen made all of us sweat and they made it more difficult than it was, but when it ended it felt really good. If Pakistan’s batsmen had done better during the year, Australia’s 88 would have been the lowest test total in 2010.
2. Finally a 200, again!
When a 200 would be scored in an ODI was something that everyone wondered. Sanath Jayasuriya was widely regarded as the man who would do it first, while many thought that if anyone could do it, it was Adam Gilchrist. Many thought Virender Sehwag would be the one to achieve the feat. I used to hope no one ever gets there so that Saeed Anwar’s record remains intact; secretly I used to dream of Shahid Afridi doing it.
But, I can safely say that if there was anyone who deserved to achieve the feat first and who deserved to break Saeed Anwar’s record, it is Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin holds most of the batting records there are in ODI cricket and Test cricket, and the first ever 200 in ODI cricket is also his! Even though it came of only 147 deliveries, it wasn’t an all out slog fest, but rather a classical innings from the game’s greatest ever batsman. It came in the 2nd ODI against South Africa in Gwalior and fittingly, it was the last ODI Sachin played in 2010.
This one, I will never forget.
1. The unbelievable one
Pakistan are generally extremely bad at chasing a total. When the total is as high as 286, they are even worse. No one really expects Pakistan to chase a low total, let alone one as high as 286. And then when Shahid Afridi got out leaving the team at 136-5 in 29 overs, most people would turned their TVs off considering that the 286 is now an impossible task. Very few people believed that Abdul Razzaq walked out to the crease in the 30th over and hit an unbeaten 109 off 72 deliveries with 10 sixes and 7 boundaries to take Pakistan to a one wicket victory with one ball to spare over South Africa in Abu Dhabi! It was that type of innings that you don’t get to watch ever. It was that type of innings that you can never forget. In my books, it was the best ever ODI innings played in a chase, not only this year, but in ODI history.
The way Razzaq single handedly took the game away from South Africa was quite unbelievable. I said above that I had not seen someone take a game away like Hussey did since the days of Wasim and Waqar. Well for me, Razzaq’s feat was a notch above what Wasim and Waqar used to do as well.
Many Pakistanis will say that 2010 was a cricket year they would like to forget; despite that, I believe that there were many positives that can be taken out of the year for Pakistan cricket and cricket in general. It was a memorable year in more ways than one, and Pakistan ended 2010 on a victorious note with their largest ever win in a T20 game.
Here’s hoping to a better 2011 with many more victories for Pakistan, and many more memorable cricket performances all around the world.

Cricket-Hameed apologises to PCB for controversial interview


Dec 31 (Reuters) - Pakistan's discarded test batsman Yasir Hameed has apologised to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for violating the players' code of conduct and giving a controversial interview to a British newspaper.
Hameed, who has played 25 tests and 56 one-day internationals, told Reuters he had apologised to the PCB during a meeting with members of its integrity committee.
"I have told the board I am sorry for the interview which caused a lot of damage to Pakistan cricket and myself as well," Hameed said.
The News of the World Sunday newspaper released a secretly taped video interview of Hameed in September when the Pakistan team were touring England and after a spot fixing scandal had broken out involving Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif.
In the interview, Hameed accused some of his fellow players of being involved in fixing matches.
"I have told the board that, even though it was a trap set to implicate me by the newspaper, I had violated the code of conduct by not informing the team management about my meeting with them," he said.
Hameed said he was told he was meeting a businessman who was interested in signing him for an endorsement deal and did not know he was an undercover reporter for the newspaper.
The interview came out two days after Butt, Amir and Asif were suspended by the International Cricket Council following allegations of manipulating incidents in the fourth test against England.
The trio are due to attend a hearing of the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption tribunal in Doha from Jan. 6 which will decide their case.

The “best” of 2010


2010 will be remembered as the year Pakistan cricket finally got it right in all the wrong ways.
After years, if not decades, of relentlessly striving to reach the pinnacle of ignominy, everything awful finally came together perfectly in 2010 as the Pakistan team and its administration put on a near flawless showcase of chaos. This achievement is no mean feat for a team and administration constantly at the forefront of controversy and regularly setting the bar for public disgrace. Indeed, in the recent past we have promised and delivered years of such dizzying depths that we were at risk of becoming complacent in our own brand of, uh, excellence. After years of ball-tampering charges, embarrassing World Cup exits (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/6457689.stm), abrupt changes in leadershipdressing-room spats,terrorist attacksNasim Ashrafdrugsbanswartsdeath and more drugs, one would assume that Pakistan cricket could not possibly outdo itself any further.
How wrong we were.
In 12 months of what can only be considered a veritable tour-de-force of opprobrium, the Pakistan team and its administration put their heads together and assembled a year of such startlingly original lows that a mere fixing or doping scandal can now only be referred to as “the good old days”.
For your benefit I have sifted through the various scandals to afflict our country this past year to present you with the Top Five Scandals of 2010. Sure, there was inevitably some glory this year. We beat Australia and England overseas and mustered a few good ODIs. But why not focus on what we did best, which is to make utter spectacles of ourselves.
5. Shoaib Malik and Kamran Malik investigated by the PCB
Coming in at last place is the on-going saga of Malik and Kamran. It speaks volumes of the quality of the top four scandals when you consider that Malik and Kamran only make it to no.5 despite their multiple misdemeanors through the course of the year. Various quarters have implicated Malik as the source of intrigue and dissension in the dressing-room, many times in concert with Kamran, and both players are considered harbingers of indiscipline. These guys are in so much trouble off the field that one tends to forget how bad they are on it, which is pretty damn bad. However that doesn’t seem to have stopped them from somehow making tons of money off their positions, a scam that the PCB seems to have belatedly picked up on.
4. Shoaib Malik’s love triangle
Say what you will about Shoaib Akhtar but, as far as we know, at least the poor guy doesn’t treat women the same way as Malik. The former skipper was apparently married to Ayesha Siddiqui, until she alarmingly discovered that he was the prince of Sania Mirza’s dreams. Apparently if you’re Hyderabadi, Malik is quite the catch and amidst much publicity, fanfare and socio-political critique a large chunk of mid-2010 was absorbed by Malik’s courtship of, and eventual nuptials with, Ms. Mirza. Their romance featured the hallmarks of all traditional love affairs – the confiscation of the paramour’s passport; the revelation of a pre-existing marriage certificate; themelodic vitriol of a right-wing nationalist political party. Truly, Romeo and Juliet ain’t got nothing on these star-crossed lovers.
3. The Lord’s No-Ball Debacle
WHAT?! No.3 you say! I must be out of my mind. There is no denying that in terms of impact, prominence and system-wide repercussions, the Lord’s spot-fixing scandal was off the charts. It dominated every local and international headline and will forever change the way we look at our players. But it’s precisely because of that saturation coverage that I’m relegating the scandal to mid-level stature. Frankly, I’m bored with it. In fact, the best part of the entire drama was when Veena Malik injected some life into it by accusing Asif of being a money-grubbing cad while she herself occupied the lofty position of being engaged to a US passport holder.
2. Now you see Zulqarnain, now you don’t
And just like that, poof, he was gone. The entire Zulqarnain episode was almost genius in its absurdity. Believing his life to be in mortal peril, Zulqarnain hotfooted it to England, taking the time out to succinctly explain his motivations through his facebook status: “Leaving Pakistan cricket because get bad msg fr 1 man fr lose the match in last game”. Then, safe inside a London hotel, he expressed concern over the wellbeing of his family. Wow. And here we thought Shoaib Malik was insensitive. However, Zulqarnain would never have made it to second place on this list without the support of the PCB since it’s precisely that lack of support and trust fostered by our governing body that lead to Haider resorting to his own short-sighted methods.
1. Ijaz Butt implodes
2010 was Ijaz Butt’s masterpiece. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Butt has carefully been plotting his ascension to full-on dementia for some time now. He sowed the seeds as early as last year when he attacked Chris Broadfor criticizing the PCB’s security measures just days after the venerable ICC match referee was the target of sustained gunfire. At the time we dismissed this as nationalistic posturing. Then, earlier this year, he announced a string of bans and penalties which were promptly overturned over the course of the following months. At that point the realization began to dawn on us that all may not be quite right with the old geezer. Yet nothing prepared us for Butt’s piece de resistance when he countered the various match-fixing allegations rightly leveled against our players by suggesting that it was the English team, rather, who were guilty of deliberately underperforming forfinancial gain. Apparently the last time Butt was chilling in bookie circles he overheard someone mention that it was the English players who were up to no good. Clearly this was sufficient basis to launch a public outburst and demand an inquiry. For this remarkable tactical foresight Butt finds himself at the top of this list. And I’m not even taking his battle of egos with Younis Khan into account which, by the way, Younis won.
So there you have it. You cannot help but be in awe of the creativity involved in delivering a year of non-stop, must-see, cry-in-shame depravity. Truly, our boys and management were misfiring on all cylinders this year. Will 2011 have any chance of matching up? Remember, that was what we feared before 2010. You underestimate this team at your own peril. Here’s to another banner year.
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