BBC News
October 24, 2021
When Aamir Sohail hit a four to Prasad, Aamir Sohail's runs on the scoreboard became 55. In 1996 ODI cricket, he was batting at a strike rate of around 120 and all the shots before this stroke showed a certain aggression and playfulness.
In the language of cricket, it can be called 'day'. The 'day' when a player is in his particular zone which can be interpreted as a meditative state, where the full attention is focused on one point and there is an ignorance of the world around him.
But the moment Aamir Sohail signaled to throw Prasad out of bounds after the cross, his 'day' was over. In an instant, this day turned into Venkatesh Prasad's day.
One wonders why Aamir Sohail did this when everything was going so well.
The Pak-India match of the 2010 Asia Cup is underway. Pakistan is defending a reasonable target. There are last overs and the situation of the wicket column as well as the required run rate is also brightening the prospects for Pakistan.
Shoaib Akhtar comes for bowling, which despite not being able to take wickets all day, did not prove to be a snack for Dhoni's batsmen. Their economy rate is just below five. Harbhajan Singh is on strike.
Shoaib Akhtar shows speed, Harbhajan plays pull shots, catches but the ball bounces just before mid-wicket and Shoaib Akhtar also becomes 'Aamir Sohail' for a moment.
He utters some bitter words to Harbhajan Singh about his speed, in response each Bhajan utters something in anger and turns the ball on the next ball with such timing that all of a sudden the ball goes across the long off boundary.
The thing to think about is that when everything was going well, why did Shoaib Akhtar need to do all this? Why is it possible to win a match easily by playing a little sensible cricket, avoiding unnecessary aggression and irrational emotion?
The third generation of Pakistani cricket fans are still wondering why Pakistan has never beaten India in the World Cup.
Someone wisely said that when you try to get ahead of the game, the game has the ability to take you by surprise. And usually the result of going beyond the game is what Venkatesh Prasad did to Aamir Sohail, or what Harbhajan Singh did to Shoaib Akhtar.
In both instances, from all the prevailing cricketing wisdom, it could have been predicted that in the relevant context, Pakistan was heading in the right direction for a clear victory, but suddenly a moment of emotion turned everything upside down.
Whenever there is a Pak-India match in the World Cup, there is such a commotion in all sorts of media to sell it that the spectators on both sides dancing to the beat of drums become a picture of a battlefield and the cricketers on the front. Standing soldiers are considered. It is as if they have come to the fore to recount the past Pak-India military adventures.
This thief is good for selling cricket, but in this noisy wine, no one wants to remember what was the standard of competition in all such matches in the last 10 years? Each time there was a gap between the winning team and the opener's abilities and scorecards.
But even then, the expectation for Babar Azam from the 'nation' would be that he would turn around and change history forever. And this is the burden of illegitimate desires, under the weight of which every player starts playing a special kind of 'liver' cricket and turns a simple match into a gambling lion in the cycle of becoming a national hero.
Virat Kohli's team is the favorite in the light of manpower and recent experience in the conditions in Dubai, but if Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Fakhr Zaman, Hassan Ali and Shaheen Shah Afridi escape emotion and 'liver' cricket If they succeed in showing sensible cricket, then changing the date or not may not be such an important question.
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