By Chishty Mujahid

IT is a truth universally acknowledged (apologies to Miss Jane Austen for misquoting her) that a cricket historian with a hefty agendum must be in want of a plot. This oft-quoted point comes across as rather obvious when one goes through Osman Samiuddin’s recent account of the history of Pakistani cricket. A respected and brilliant young cricket journalist, Samiuddin’s major aims and intentions are worthy of praise, and if he found (while researching this book) that he had bitten off more than he could chew, he has exhibited far too much professionalism to allow that to sully the spirit of his work. The book is thoroughly researched, and one would be right in assuming that it counts as a labour of love for Samiuddin. It has apparently taken over eight years to see the light of day. If my memory serves me right, it seems a decade ago that Samiuddin and I had lunch at the Karachi Boat Club to talk about Pakistan cricket as I remembered it over the years. This dialogue was in preparation of his “forthcoming” publication (By the way I myself have been “threatening to write my memoirs since the turn of the century!).

Samiuddin has been busy with more important matters in his life during the interim period, and that may have resulted in a delay in the publication of this wonderful work. He changed jobs, shifted residences, and altered his personal status during this time. The book is divided into five, equally-portioned sections that span the history of the game from the Abdul Hafeez Kardar era to the present one, ending on a poignant note about Mohammed Amir’s ban owing to corruption charges. Perhaps it is Kardar’s towering personality that sets the tone for how Samiuddin describes many of the key figures of his book. The author displays a mild obsession with personalities; certainly it appears as if considerable time and effort went into interviewing major players and administrators such as Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, the late Air Marshal (Retd.) Malik Nur Khan, and Shahryar Khan, to name just a few. Interviews are an important aspect of sports journalism, but one must keep in mind that the figures that speedily bowl at us from the pages of this book are ones that are partly the constructs of the writer’s active imagination.

This is not to say that he has his basic facts wrong; rather his preoccupation with constructing a story, indeed a long-winded sports narrative, supposedly makes it necessary for him to present athletes as characters rather than as just major cogs in the wheel of the game itself. Indeed, he recounts aspects of Fazal Mahmood’s life with such rapture that one almost gets tricked into believing that Samiuddin is referring to a movie star as opposed to a cricketer. As a brief digression, I am intrigued by how remarks about the Oval hero attributed to a little girl (which Anjum Niaz must have been in 1954) should be construed. It is commendable that he also focuses on enormously influential cricket lovers such as the mogul Abdulrehman Bukhtiar (who revamped the entire image of cricket in Sharjah), but ultimately the book is less about the game and more about the images of people. Or about especially memorable moments such as ones involving symbolic shirts with pictures of tigers on them. That cricket is glamorous is no secret, but whether it needs to be glamorously depicted in a sound, historical account of it is highly debatable.

It is surprising how a history of Pakistan cricket leaves out a most significant happening like the initial international encounters between Pakistan and “arch rivals” India. There is not even a passing mention of Pakistan’s first official tour to India in 1952 after attaining Test Status from the International Cricket Council, and their innings victory at Lucknow with Mahmood getting a dozen wickets. Also one cannot fathom the reasons as to how and why a journalist of Samiuddin’s calibre misses out on the ‘spicy’ Idris Beg incident in 1955 in Peshawar involving the touring Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) ‘A’ party under Donald Carr. This incident almost resulted in a breakdown of cricketing relations between the Board of Cricket Control of Pakistan and the MCC, and the highest authorities in both lands had to intervene to save the situation.

About halfway through the book, it becomes clear that sounder editorial help on the part of Harper Collins, India — time for Pakistani publishers to become active and encourage authors to write about Pakistan in Pakistan rather than rush across the border — could have restructured this in such a way that it would have become easier and more enjoyable to read. Several of the chapters of the first half contain digressions related to Pakistani politics. These tend to bore one far more than the more necessary political machinations involving match-fixing, ball-tampering, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) dynamics, and the Qayyum report that crop up in the latter portion of the book. At many points in his narrative Samiuddin jumps from discussing players’ lives, to written snapshots of certain games, to presidential interference in matters, to his own slightly obtrusive opinions. There is the occasional slip up (not hugely significant, but important because of the author’s extremely high standards), such as when he comments on A. R. Cornelius’s conversion to Catholicism, but entirely omits that Cornelius attended Selwyn College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate. Something he could not have done as a Catholic, since Selwyn — my own alma mater — did not begin to admit non-Anglicans until 1956.

Nevertheless, one can understand, even excuse, his glamourisation of those who have passed into the realm of legend: there is an especially beautifully written section on Hanif Mohammed’s breathtaking triple century in Barbados in ’58 (brilliantly described by A.H. Karadar in Green Shadows). Sundry moments such as this one abound in the book — Kardar’s historic victory at the Oval and Javed Miandad’s timeless six, to give a couple of examples. It is at times like these that Samiuddin is in his element, but one requires more than just flair to pull off a book of this nature and magnitude.

One can also be generous and understand why, when writing the section on match-fixing and the convoluted investigations that followed, Samiuddin had to rely simply on a handful of sources who were willing to speak with him — even fewer of those I expect were willing to be quoted. Because of this the reader should not expect to obtain a complete picture of that affair from this book.

On matters such as the pivotal roles played by advertising in promoting the Wills matches, Samiuddin does well to cite the informed Javed Jabbar at various points, and we can appreciate Arif Abbasi’s cooperation with the author in outlining the story of the privatisation of the PCB, among other matters. But at points, the writer’s assumptions appear trite to the point of being useless — for instance, Tauqir Zia’s military stance towards leadership should hardly need to be dwelt on, given that he was primarily a general! To give Samiuddin credit he does not miss out key details such as Zia Sahib’s creation of grounds, especially in Balochistan — a fine initiative, that has sadly not been maintained.

There are times when Samiuddin begins a topic, deals with it brilliantly, and then leaves it unfinished. One example is his handling of the media situation. He does start with cricket commentary but after a wonderful beginning does not follow it through up to the present day, flagrantly ignoring broadcasters of the calibre of Mohammad Idris, Syed Ehteshamul Haq, the late Shahzad Humayun, Tariq Rahim, and Tariq Saeed. He has completely, for some unknown reason, ignored his own biradari the very strong and competent print media — giants like S.F. Husain, Anwar Hussain (Annu Bhai), Abdul Hye Bhatti, Farooq Mazhar, Haleem Ahmad, Rehanullah Siddiqui, Qamar Ahmed, Lateef Jafri (to mention some of the “oldies”), and the current young and dynamic ones Shahid Hashmi, Abdul Waheed Khan, Abdul Majid Bhatti and Abdul Rasheed Shakoor.

This is not to say that an interested reader, or passionate cricket fan, will not enjoy the book; he or she most likely will. It is well researched, and had Samiuddin placed a third of his material in footnote or endnote form, much of the tedium that results from swimming through the disparate themes alluded to above would have been alleviated. Samiuddin’s use of the anglicised method of referring to surnames can be confusing. To illustrate: Iqbal for him refers to Asif Iqbal (though that too often remains unclear) and there are many others instances such as this one. This method can also bring out some insensitivities such as the reference to Manzoor Elahi as Elahi — an expression which at one time landed one of my colleague commentators, recently returned from abroad, in trouble when we had a number of telephone callers saying that Elahi refers to God.

Player tensions, umpire apathy (especially with regards to ball-tampering), dirty politics, disputes over payments for professionally playing cricket, etc. all jostle for attention in the space of almost 500 rather dense and long-winded pages. Surprisingly, it is perhaps what Samiuddin doesn’t include that moves me most. For a publication of this magnitude it has too few photographs, which leaves the reader yearning for more intimate introductions to both their’s and Samiuddin’s heroes.

Given that he writes a fine concluding section on bowling dynamics, with special explanations regarding the reverse swing, I wish he had chosen to include a brief but important mention of the handicapped, but driven, Azeem Hafeez, who perhaps deserves to be considered the real wounded tiger of cricket. The lesson Samiuddin may learn from this is that in trying to say everything, one can sometimes forget to say that which matters the most. All in all though, the book is a very enjoyable publication recommended to all cricket lovers (and perhaps also to the haters) especially now that Pakistan is in the midst of World Cup fever.

Speaking of the World Cup, Pakistan’s preparations for the 2015 ICC tournament looked half-baked from the very onset. The team performed poorly in the first two matches, being soundly walloped by India and then the West Indies. There was moaning and groaning, finger-pointing, and TV channels went berserk going so far as to say that the team would be returning home shortly. There were other theories bandied about too. However, the team bounced back with two back-to-back wins against Zimbabwe and UAE. The batsmen are finding their feet and timing, the bowlers their line and length. Fitness, fielding, and wicket-keeping remain causes for concern. Whether we qualify or not, the management and the team have their work cut out for them.

The reviewer is a cricket commentator and former chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket Hardcover

(CRICKET)

By Osman Samiuddin

HarperCollins, India

ISBN 978-9350298015

480 pp.