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Akram 'tricks, Lanka enters final

I had a good breakfast this morning.

As it turned out, it was lucky for me that Sri Lanka, which sttarted the day needing 111 more runs to get the two additional bonus points required to book a place in the final at Dhaka, got to the target within 74.1 overs for the loss of no further wickets.

If Lanka had failed to get to the target, I would have had this incensed e-mailer demanding that I eat my words of the previous evening, when I had indicated that the on-field events of day two of the Asian Test Championship fixture between Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Lahore indicated the home team's desire to ensure that Lanka, and not India, got too the final.

Frankly, I couldn't have forced down a single morsel more, after that heavy breakfast -- so hey, lucky me, I didn't have to eat my words, did I?

The game produced one magic moment, which needs recounting upfront. All afternoon yesterday, all morning today, we were being told how bland this pitch in Lahore was, how there was nothing in it for the bowlers, and such, and so forth.

And then, Wasim Akram produces the hat-trick.

The pace ace had bowled 7 overs in the first hour of play yesterday morning. Since then, he had vanished from the bowling crease, despite the caning his support bowlers were getting.

Akram finally brought himself back on in the 80th over, five overs after Lanka had accumulated the 292 it needed to edge India on the run rate and get into the final of the ATC.

His second over proved sensational. The first ball was a beauty, angled across Kaluwitharana. The batsman, who till then was completely untroubled by pace and spin alike, reached forward, was beaten for pace and late movement off the seam, and edged behind for Moin Khan to hold.

The very next ball was as fast as Akram has ever bowled. Pitching middle and leg, the ball straightened, beat Bandaratilleke for pace as he shaped to move to off and play to leg, and sent the leg stump cartwheeling.

Wickramasinghe didn't stand a chance, really. Again, an Akram blinder, this one pitching just outside off, an express delivery that seamed in just enough to slide past the edge and clip the off stump on its way through.

And Akram had got his first hat-trick in Tests (the first Pakistan bowler to achieve the feat, incidentally), to add to the two he has taken in one day internationals. An over later, he completed his act, bowling last man Sajeewa D'Silva with yet another express delivery, the off stump uprooted and sent cart-wheeling to the keeper.

It was a superlative spell from a brilliant quick bowler on top of his form -- and an indication of how lethal Akram can be when he puts his mind to it.

Akram, after the day's play, recalled how on many occasions, he had taken two in two, without ever getting the hat-trick. "In fact," Akram recalled, "on this ground, against the West Indies, I once got two in two, and Imran who was the captain then told me, 'Bowl him out' when the third man came in. Imran was at mid on, and the third batsman hit the ball straight to him -- and Imran dropped it! Yeah, I was very relieved to have got there, finally."

The performance also seemed to nail the theory that this pitch was dead. Two of the dismissals owed to movement off the seam, and all four deliveries owed to blinding pace.

The performance can never be over-praised. But it also raises a question -- why did Akram bowl himself so little?

'After lunch, I thought I would come on and bowl a few overs, get my rhythm going for the next match', said Akram about his not having bowled since the first morning, but that doesn't really address the question.

The blindingly obvious answer was that it was not part of Pakistan's gameplan to bowl Lanka out cheaply, before the batting side had got the three bonus points that, added to the four it got with the ball, would ensure that it made the final.

That brings up yet another email I got this morning, quoted here in full, as written: "Quit this bellyaching. If India does not make it to the finals, India and India alone is to blame. They lost matches that, IF THEY HAD THE WILL AND DETERMINATION, they should have won comfortably. Your insinuation that somehow Sri Lanka is unfit to contest the Asia Cup finals is belittling them unjustly. After all their recent test record is better than India's! So accept and publicize this fact - INDIA IS THE WORST TEST TEAM! Unless this fact is (accepted) by all, the team will not improve.

That assessment ignores the salient point in this whole tamasha. It is no one's contention, here, that India has been unjustly done in here. Pakistan played by the rules, Pakistan was entitled to play by the rules, and if India is not in the final, it is purely India's fault.

This possibility, in fact, was anticipated during our match reports on the Colombo tie between India and Sri Lanka, when it was pointed out that India had failed to make a real push for maximum bonus points from that game. It was mentioned, at that point, that there was every chance Pakistan would ensure that Lanka went into the final ahead of India.

And that is precisely what has happened.

The other point raised here is that there is an insinuation that Lanka are not good enough as a Test side. Not meaning to be contradictory here, but such an insinuation was never made, nor intended.

Lanka's fitness to be in the final is not in question. In fact, I have a sneaky feeling that in the final, Lanka could just end up taking the title. Arjuna Ranatunga is an equally shrewd skipper, the indications are that the Lankans will come into the game at full strengh, and while Lanka does not have the firepower to bowl Pakistan out twice, the Lankan gameplan will be to try for maximum bonus points, to play the game out to a draw, and take the title by virtue of having more points on the board.

The question that this game has raised is neither India's fitness or otherwise to play Test cricket, nor Lanka's own credentials. The question is simply this -- the ICC has proclaimed, and quite loudly at that, that it is opposed to match fixing, that it will take action against any such instances.

So the question is, is it match-fixing only when a player takes money and throws a match?

Suppose two teams get together to manipulate a particular result, what then?

The question deserves to be raised -- and answered by the ICC. If only because this ATC is being seen as the precursor of the world test championship. If something of this sort can happen with just three teams competing, imagine the fun and games there could be when nine nations get together in the Test arena.

This is the question that has been thrown up in Lahore. What has also been conclusively proved is that the points system, as it stands, does not serve its stated intention (the founding fathers of this tournament indicated that the idea behind awarding points was to ensure healthy, competitive cricket -- adjectives that any person who saw the matches in Colombo and now in Lahore would be hard put to apply to those two games).

The most amusing aspect, for me, is that it is all happening under the gaze of no less than the ICC president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, whose brainchild this is. Knowing well that the cricketers of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were opposed to this contest at this particular point in time, with the World Cup around the corner, Dalmiya twisted enough arms to push the tournament through.

Harsha Bhogle said it best when, while discussing the events in Lahore, he told me: "Dalmiya wanted this tournament, and now the players have shown him what they think of it."

Meanwhile, in a game abounding in irony, there is yet another one. In Colombo, both teams played cricket for the first 100 overs of each of the first innings -- and then shrugged and went through the motions for the duration.

Here, having gone through the motions in the first innings to a prepared script (frankly, I owe that line to Ravi Shastri and Ramiz Raja, both of whom, in a panel discussion at the end of the Lankan first innings, agreed that events till that point in time had gone as per the script Akram had written before the start of the Test), both teams seemed to get down to business the second time around.

Pakistan opened with Afridi, the ostensible reason being that Anwar was not feeling too well (though he is put down to come in at the fall of the first wicket, which argues a quick recovery). Actually, you don't need a reason, it is the batting side's prerogative to open with whoever you please.

And the way Afridi batted, going for the bowling like he was opening in a one-dayer, the gameplan is pretty obvious -- Pakistan is looking to put quick runs on the board, with an eye to a possible declaration, say around tea-time tomorrow, giving themselves one session on day four, and all three sessions of day five, to try and bowl the Lankans out and win this one outright.

Afridi had his slice of luck. Five slices of said commodity, in fact, being dropped twice at backward square leg on the mistimed hook, a third time, again mishooking, by the keeper, who also dropped the simplest of catches just before play was called off for light, and once at deep mid off when the batsman tried to launch one over the ropes.

Wajahat Wasti got his due courtesy the umpire, when Bandaratilleke got him on the back pad in front of middle stump only for David Shepherd to figure that the ball could have touched the bat on its way through -- which, as it turned out, it hadn't.

Lanka, meanwhile, appeared to be aware of the danger here. Thus, after some loose bowling early on, the bowlers tightened their line and length, Bandaratilleke in particular being outstanding in this respect. Inept catching apart, the Lankan ground fielding was on par, and the Pakistan batsmen found run-making a touch more difficult after the first dozen overs.

When play was called off for bad light Afridi, whose 50 came off 67 deliveries, had got to 81 while Wasti, top scorer for Pakistan in the first innings, was batting on 61 in a team score of 149/0 in 40.4 overs.

Taken with the 70 run lead Pakistan had taken in the first innings, this meant that the home side was ahead by 219 runs, with all ten wickets standing.

A superb position to find itself in, giving Pakistan the chance to really accelerate on the fourth morning, mount an imposing total, and then turn the screws on a hugely inexperienced Lankan batting lineup in the second innings. Interesting, that the second half of this Test could prove of more competitive interest than the first half.

Meanwhile, time to put the controversies on the back-burner and applaud a superlative exhibition of pace, swing and seam bowling by a past-master of the art. Akram -- incidentally, the only captain to have taken a hat-trick -- was, today, on a different planet -- a planet he is the sole inhabitant of, when he is on song.

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