When Mohammad Hafeez edged a thundering Boult to second slip in the first innings of the deciding Test in Abu Dhabi last week, something died.
Hafeez sees the ball fly into the safe hands of Tim Southee, but the umpires still check upstairs. It delays the inevitable but it gives more time to an overthinking man, to think, to reflect. Not about what has just happened, but what the immediate future holds.
Hafeez has never had it easy in Pakistan cricket ... at least that’s what he insists upon. In the land of comeback heroes, Hafeez is a gladiator. In his debut series in 2003, he averaged 43 with the bat with an unbeaten ton in just his second game. He was dropped for the next three years.
He came back in the English summer of 2006 with a wonderful 95 in his first outing. And then averaged 47 in the next eight innings.
And then he went on the dreaded South African safari.
South Africa to Pakistan is what India was to Ricky Ponting (batting average 26) and what Pakistan was to Dennis Lillee (bowling average 110), i.e. a graveyard of sorts.
In South Africa, Pakistan has only ever won two Test matches. It’s where Inzamamul Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Misbahul Haq and Azhar Ali couldn’t reach three figures in 37 attempts, with a combined average of 27 runs an innings.
The pace and bounce in South Africa was too much for Hafeez to handle; it knocked him out of the Test squad for another three years between 2007 and 2010.