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Windies shock Pakistan in Sharjah

Funny old game, cricket.

All of this last month, Pakistan has been humiliating the West Indies, defeating them three out of three in the Test series.

And here, under lights at Sharjah which, for Pakistan, is tantamount to playing at home, we got what popular opinion held was the ultimate mismatch. A Pakistan team at full strength, riding the wave of immense success. And opposed to that, a West Indies outfit that reminds you more of a decrepit boxer struggling to stay on his feet. Led by ageing lion Courtney Walsh. Star bowler Curtley Ambrose among cricket's walking wounded, and not able to play here. "Prince" Brian Lara finding the sheen of his royal purple dimmed somewhat by bad form and worse luck.

David versus Goliath? Heck, this was David without even his slingshot. The script called for a quick, clean kill and full points for Pakistan -- only, they forgot to give the Windies a copy of the script, and the guys from the Caribbean ended up writing their own lines.

On the second of two pitches prepared for this tournament -- identical to the one on which England and India battled it out yesterday --- Courtney Walsh won the toss and decided to bat. Akram, for his part, indicated that if he had called right, he would have opted to bowl first -- apparently the dew factor is proving worrying to a lot of captains out there.

Waqar and Wasim are among the best pair of strike bowlers in the business, while the Windies opening pair of Stuart Williams and the towering Philo Wallace are not up there with previous pairings of the order of, say, Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge.

Did Pakistan, initially, get that shade overconfident? Did the new ball bowlers try to just blow the batsmen away, attack too hard? I suspect so. The length, from both bowlers, was too full, and the openers, playing a mix of authentic strokes and chance-your-arm stuff, got the bit between their teeth and raced off to a flier. 22/0 in 5, 57/0 in 10 and the batting side had already, right there, given Brian Lara the kind of platform that sees him produce his best.

Made the point yesterday, worth repeating today -- when a pitch is such that batsmen can poke their front foot down the track before the ball is bowled and hit quality quick bowlers back over their heads when the ball is new and hard, there is something drastically wrong. Cricket was designed to pit bat against ball -- this kind of track pits bat against bat, the only question being which side can hit longer, harder, further than the other.

Pakistan compounded it with some of the most atrocious catching I've seen in a long time. In the 11th over, Saqlain found Wallace's leading edge, the ball ballooned nicely to the left of Inzamam at mid on, it was the kind of catch schoolboys take in their sleep but Inzy, running rather lazily to the ball, let it pop out. The result? Windies 79/0 in 15 and going really well.

Inzamam then made amends running back a good 15 yards and holding a brilliantly judged catch off a mistimed lofted drive from Wallace off Saqlain, but the damage had already been done. And Wasim Akram, of all people, compounded it when, in the space of seven balls, he twice dropped absolute sitters, at the mid off position, off Stuart Williams. First, Azhar Mahmood who mixed his slower deliveries with the odd quicker one very intelligently, got Williams driving early, the ball went straight into, then out of, Akram's hands. Then Saqlain provoked the leading edge, again Akram got it in both hands without moving from his hands and let it go like the ball was dirty and he didn't want to soil his hands.

Result? Wallace goes on to make 77 off 105, and the second wicket falls only at the score of 160.

A dropped catch or, in this case three, impacts not merely on the fortunes of the surviving batsman, but often on his partner as well. When Lara came out to bat, he was a prime candidate for early dismissal. Feet static, bat waving futilely at the ball, a far cry from the champion batsman he is rated to be. The wicket of his well-entrenched partner going down at this stage would have added to his pressure, and perhaps induced the error. In the event Wallace, shaking off the two lives, took charge, rotated the strike intelligently, hit the ball cleanly when it was there to be hit, took the pressure off Lara -- and Pakistan paid dearly.

Once Lara danced down the wicket to Azhar Mahmood to hit him superbly through cover, right off the sweet spot, for four, the complexion of the game changed. Suddenly, the feet were moving like Lara had spent the morning brushing up on his ballet lessons, the bat became one big sweet spot, and first Azhar, then Shahid Afridi, were effortlessly carted over long on for sixes to send the scoreboard into overdrive. 98/1 in 20, 117/1 in 25, 155/1 in 30, and Windies were on a roll.

The thing with Lara's batting, when at its best, is that he seems to have a map of the field in his mind at all times -- and a very definite idea of where the gaps are, and what strokes to use to get the ball into those vacant spaces. Fluent drives were interspersed with the most delicate of late cuts, glances and glides, and in that mood, Lara is like a Rolls Royce given its head on the highway -- smooth, easy, effortless.

Ironically, it was Akram who ended Williams' innings for 77 off 105 when an attempted inside out drive at Afridi lobbed gently to mid off -- a catch as simple as the two he had grassed, and Akram looked most relieved when number three stuck. But by then, Windies were on 160/2, and it was all too late.

Hooper looked in prime touch, hitting a superb six over extra cover off Afridi and, with lovely calling and running -- Lara and Hooper would rank as the best pair in the Windies lineup in this regard -- kept the momentum going, Windies coasting to 175/2 in 35, then 216/2 in 40. Hooper however made the mistake of trying to hit Saqlain, brought back to bowl the death overs, across the line on the on side, missed, and was well stumped by Moin. Good piece of bowling, Saqlain spotting Hooper's intentions and firing one through straight. The right hander had made only 17 off 21, but his partnership with Lara realised 57 runs in quick time.

242/3 in 45 seemed to signal a 280+ total, but Akram, returning, swung from leg to off, Lara flicked against the movement of the ball, the ball flew high and straight to deep midwicket and Windies lost their most vital wicket in over number 46, Lara going for 88 off just 80 deliveries, with seven fours and three sixes. An innings of great charm and, in the Alec Stewart-Sachin Tendulkar mould, yet another demonstration that clean, classical batsmanship can get runs as quick or quicker than the wild heaves so favoured by the "pinch hitters".

After Lara's dismissal, the wickets fell in a bit of a heap, batsmen falling to a mixture of over-ambitious strokeplay and some accurate yorkers from Akram who, with the first and second ball of his final over, fired out Rose and keeper David Williams before Lewis denied him the hat-trick. Chanderpaul, batting as low as number six, however ensured that the Windies didn't lose their way altogether with two superbly hit fours in Akram's penultimate over and some intelligent cricket off the last two deliveries of the innings, to end on 16 off 11.

For Pakistan, the only bowler to come off with honours was Saqlain. 3 for 35 off 10 overs, at a time when the West Indies was going smooth as silk, was brilliant stuff. And his duel, in the final overs, against Lara who he tied in knots time and again was alone worth the price of admission. Akram took out three batsmen, two at the end, but at a high cost of 62 runs off his ten overs, while his striking partner Waqar Younis was mauled for 53 off his ten overs.

Pakistan's bowlers failed to bowl the tight restrictive line which is the only option on this kind of track. Worse, they conceeded too many extras, 12 wides and a no ball effectively giving the Windies not just 13 additional runs but also two extra overs. And when you factor in the three dropped catches early on, the seeds of Pakistan's eventual defeat were sown right there.

Pakistan opened with Afridi and Aamir Sohail. The West Indies, with Courtney Walsh and Franklyn Rose.

The fashion, when discussing quick bowlers, is to rave about Wasim, Waqar, Donald, McGrath, Srinath and such -- but to my mind, Walsh ranks among the real modern masters. And a magnificient first spell of 6-0-10-0 was yet another indication of just how brilliant a strategic bowler the unassuming Windies skipper is.

Of all the fast bowlers on view thus far -- Srinath, Headley, Wasim and Waqar -- Walsh alone worked out the perfect, run-denying line of attack. Bowling from just wide of the stumps, angling in to off, pitching fractionally short of driving length, he had both Sohail and the dangerous Afridi reduced to squaring up and defending in front of their chests, the ball kicking from just short of good length and making anything in the way of strokeplay impossible.

But what Walsh denied, Rose gave away. There was a touch of Santa Claus about the way, time after time, Rose followed up a couple of good, tight deliveries with a nice, easy gimme ball outside off or on leg -- you almost expected the bowler to spout a white beard and go ho-ho-ho as the fielder fetched the ball back from the boundary line.

However, it was Rose who, against the run of play, got the breakthrough. Walsh pushed a man out on the line at midwicket, Rose bowled one short on leg, coming in to middle, Sohail fell for the old three card trick and swung it straight to the fielder posted there just a ball earlier. Pak 24/1, Sohail making 17 off those.

Cricket is a strange game -- ask Saeed Anwar. Earlier this year, he was batting's newest god, with a world record 194 to his name. Since then, he's been on the skids, struggling for touch and timing -- and today's innings, coming in at three, was no better than other recent outings. A lovely flick through midwicket and an exquisite cover drive revealed flashes of that other Anwar, but for the most part, he pushed, poked, prodded and edged more than he middled, before driving Dillon straight to Lara at mid off, his score reading 22 off 32 and Pakistan at that stage 91/2.

At the other end Afridi, denied his usual extravagance by Walsh's nagging consistency, went berserk the minute the Windies skipper took himself out of the attack. Rose went for 18 runs in one over, three slashed fours over point and cover punctuated by a towering six over the straight sightscreen. Then he picked on Hooper, slamming him for two sixes in his second over and generally brutalising all bowlers.

Afridi's strength is that there are no half measures. He sets himself, grits his jaw, takes the bat right back on the backlift and swings for glory, aesthetics be damned. And solely thanks to his efforts -- 67 off 56 with six fours and four sixes -- Pakistan raced away from a sedentary start (15 in the first five) to post 81/1 in 15, 116/2 in 20.

The key to the second half of the game was always going to be Rawl Lewis. The leg spinner, in only his fourth match, had to bowl tight if the Windies were to make a match of it. If he had lost his line and been slammed around, the bowling side would have found itself totally out of options, with Pakistan making all the running.

In the event, Lewis clicked and how! Barring a rather extraordinary tendency to bowl a couple of no balls per over at the least, he was superb. Bowling over the wicket, the right hand leggie let the ball come easily off the back of the hand -- he is, like Shane Warne, a third-finger spinner, and here he did a Warne, pitching the ball two feet outside leg and turning it to off and middle. His advent had the impact, on the inflationary scoring rate, of a traffic cop's raised hand, and first Afridi, then Ijqz, succumed to the pressure.

Afridi's exit was predictable -- down the track, the heck of a huge swipe aimed at putting the ball in geostationary orbit somewhere above midwicket, ball flashing off the outer edge, defeating the stroke thanks to turn and bounce, going straight to Lara at point and the throw catching Afridi stranded yards out of his ground. And Ijaz, just 11 laborious runs later, stood in his crease, watched the ball turn into him, and played it off his hips straight to midwicket like he was giving Hooper fielding practise. The trouble for both batsmen was that thanks to the turn, they were not able to hit cleanly on the on, neither did the line permit the inside out hit through off, and frustration at being checked did the rest.

From that point on, the result was pretty much inevitable. Compare the Windies 155/1 in 30, with Pakistan's 157/4 in the same number of overs. And it is evident that from there, the pressures of chasing a sizeable target with four frontline batsmen back in the hut was always going to tell.

The left-handed Akhtar Sarfaraz is the latest meteor on the Pak batting scene. Somehow, Pakistan has a knack of unearthing young boys, putting them into the big time and giving them an almost immediate burial -- the names of Hasan Raza, Mohammad Wasim et al coming to mind in this connection in recent times. To his credit, the latest debutant handled Lewis better than anyone else -- being left handed, it was easier for him to swing the leggie with the tide into the onside, while the more experienced Inzamam floundered at the other end. However, Sarfaraz's stock in batting trade seems to be the quick move onto the back foot and the thump through mid on or mid wicket -- he tried that once too often, Simmons straightened one on off stump, and the batsman was caught plumb in front.

Simmons, like Lewis, did a superb job in the middle overs. Nothing fancy -- just a gentle lope into the bowling crease, and a gentle propulsion of the ball, the line wicket to wicket, the length full and tight, no room for batsmen to hit through. Runs slowed to a trickle, necessitating the taking of bigger and bigger risks, and the result was inevitable -- a steady procession to, and from, the wicket.

Inzamam, who looked completely out of sorts against Lewis' leg breaks, proved yet again that for sheer idiocy in running between wickets he is pretty much unparalleled. Wasim Akram played one to point, Inzy (33 off 65) took off like an Olympic sprinter and Simmons, to whom the ball had gone, slammed the throw bang onto the stumps.

Moin Khan, normally superb between wickets, must have been picking up pointers on technique from Inzamam -- his own dismissal vying with the earlier one in rank silliness. A gentle push to cover, and Moin put his head down and raced for the other end. Rawl Lewis fielded, turned, threw down the stumps and the Cyril Mitchley didn't even need the third umpire's help on that one.

Azhar Mahmood is a dangerous striker of the ball, but Walsh, coming back for his final spell, foxed him with the slower ball, swinging in at yorker length. Mahmood, standing a foot outside the crease, got it full toss, and hit it straight to Simmons at short midwicket. One run later, Walsh again drifted an inswinger from middle to off, Akram tried a flat-batted heave over the onside field, and Chanderpaul on the line at midwicket just stood there and accepted the gift. Waqar Younis completed the rout when he lofted the fourth ball he received straight to Wallace at long off, and Pakistan had crumbled to 232, giving Windies a comfortable 43 run win.

For the West Indies, three bowlers made the difference. Walsh's spells are best encapsulated in his figures -- 8-0-14-2. Interestingly, the best ever bowling figures in Sharjah belong to Walsh -- five wickets for just one single, solitary run.

Lewis, meanwhile, returned 8-1-31-1, and Simmons 7-0-31-1. And between them, these two bowlers made the middle overs a time of torment for the Pakistan batsmen, increasing the pressure to such an extent that the famed batting lineup crumbled like a biscuit.

"It's a different venue, a different game, what happened in the Tests is history," Walsh had said before the start of the game. And so it proved, with the West Indies comprehensively outplaying their recent tormentors in all departments of the game and, in the process, throwing the tournament wide open.

One little fact explains today's result -- the West Indies held every single chance that came their way, and hit the stumps each time they needed to. Pakistan misfield, and dropped three sitters. At this level of cricket, that is all it takes, really, to turn a game one way or the other.

Brian Lara, for an innings of exquisite touch and timing, was named Man of the Match.

And meanwhile, the stage is set for a humdinger of a game on Saturday, when England and the West Indies, with one win apiece, take on each other.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there may not be a lesson for all teams, in the results of the first two games? The wicket may look, and play, like the proverbial shirtfront. But no matter how good your batting lineup, chasing anything over 245, 250 is going to be very, very iffy. I mean, India's defeat had the pundits go "Oh, India can't chase anyway". But how do you explain a full strength Pakistan failing after Afridi had bludgeoned them to a flier? That too, against a side they had just defeated 3-0 in a Test series, each win coming by a huge margin?