Pakistan Beats Australia After Ellion Years
Jubilant Pakistanis were on the streets of Lahore to Peshawar, after their cricket team beat Australia at Headingley. It was what every Pak fan was waiting for the last 15 years. In the world of cricket you do not come of age until you beat the Aussies, for no other team fights like the men from the land of kangaroos do over a match of cricket. And even in this match they proved once more, results notwithstanding they are the masters of the game.
In test cricket when a team is shot out for 88 in the first innings, it is only the Aussies who can still make it a game—that is the lessons from Headingly where they just lost to Pakistan by 3 wickets.
First however, it is the winners that I must talk about. This is a country that has never been put on the pedestal which they truly deserve. When West Indies was beating the world with 3 Ws. Worrell, Walcott and Weekes, it is only Pakistan who had won a series convincingly against them with the West Indies at the summit of their glory. Former England skipper Nasir Hossain once commented, the only certainty about Pak cricket team is their uncertainty, and that was proved again in their victory over Australia.
That is the history of Pakistan cricket. From Hanif Mohammed to Zahir Abbas they had abandon of master batsmen, from A J Kardar to Waqar Younis they had bowlers to destroy any opposition, in Javed Miandad they had a cricketing brain seldom the world has ever seen, yet, their performance never did justice to their talents. Not until Imran khan came in and made a team from these extremely talented bunch of cricketers.
And with Imran’s retirement sunk the fortune of their team, as they lost their purpose as a team. Just take this Headingley match. Ricky Ponting won the toss and decided to bat without a 2nd thought, a decision that he would later regret. It did not take long for the Pak young fast bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif to discover that the ball was seaming and swinging to their hearts content. Both these young bowlers rose to the occasion and bowled their hearts out. Aussies lost their 1st wicket when the score was 20 and without scoring another run they lost wicket again. They never recovered from the twin blows, and the team was shot out for 88 runs, It was their lowest in the first innings of a Test match in the last 53 years, and their seventh-lowest score of all time.
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