 New season build up...
I was thinking, that amongst all the talk of the affairs at the Oval, what was almost completely forgotten was the performance of the team on the field, and in particular that of Inzi. All my appreciation for the courage and boldness he showed that at the Oval aside, unfortunately for Pakistan, he didn't actually set the world alight with his batting performance through out the tour, and after his heroics at home against England, and given this was in all most all probability his last tour to England, this will remain a big disappointment for me, and I'm sure for him too.
But I guess, everyone has a spell or two, once in a while where you don't get as many runs as you ought to have. I don't think Inzi was necessarily in poor form, but probably just some what out of nick, or at least that's what you can say about his test performances. His one-day record off late though, dating back as far to our England home series in fact, has not exactly been very consistent. It would not be wrong to say he's underachieved. Often he's got starts and got 30s and 20s, but there haven't been enough big scores from him as you'd expect.
Given the four match ban, he will once again be sidelined from cricket for a while, and that is unlikely to harbour very well for his form revival hopes. If there's any relief, it is that there is no shortage of cricket in the coming months for him to work his way into form again, and that too in reasonably favorable circumstances. We have West Indies coming over in the winter, and then India, both sides do not have the greatest bowling sides in world cricket and if the evidence from the past two seasons is anything to go by, the pitches ought to be decently flat as well, so he'll have a pretty good chance to get back in full nick just in time for the World Cup. It will be very important that he heads into the WC being in good nick, otherwise the memories from the last one, could become all too difficult to handle, and that will be the last thing we need, especially after this recent Younis Khan controversy.
Another player, who is in serious need of some big performances is Kamran Akmal. One cannot remember a wicket keeper having such a shocking series with both bat and gloves as much as did he. And again, given all his good showing prior to the England tour, this was again a major let down. In fact, it might be argued Kamran was lucky not to have been dropped for the CT. Again like Inzi, he'll have a good opportunity in the CT to gain back some confidence in more familiar conditions of the sub-continent, but one thing is for sure, he sure needs some runs under his belt and pretty quickly too.
I cannot of think anything to suggest of the rest of the players, because their performances (rated as either very good, very bad, or unsatisfactory) completely lived up to my expectations. I expected Asif, Younis and Yousuf to do well; they did. I expected the openers to fail miserably; they did. I expected Sami to do horribly he did and I expected all of the rest (the likes of Gul, Razzaq, and so on) to do very well and very poorly in patches and they did so again. Inzi and Kamran Akmal's no-show was the only real surprise for me. It will ne interesting to note henceforth how both of them perform over the next season.  | 
06-10-2006, 11:56 AM
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