Imagine if there were to be no India - Pakistan international cricket matches ever again. Imagine if nothing was ever written and debated in the cricket news about arch rivals India and Pakistan and their latest conflagration. It would be a sad day for international cricket if Pakistan cricket was permitted to be sidelined and marginalized to the extent that it was no longer the potent force that it has been in cricket from time to time. Indians never have an indifferent reaction to Pakistan cricket or players and an India – Pakistan match is always the zenith of exciting, entertaining, absorbing and riveting cricket. Cricket at its colorful best!

As Mike Atherton, former England Captain writes in his column, Pakistan cricket has produced “some of the game's greatest talents, and some of its biggest villains.” It is their sheer unpredictability that makes Pakistani players an exciting addition to international cricket. When you take names like Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saeed Anwar you are talking about some of the all time greats of the game. The Pakistani team fought great odds and through sheer grit and determination managed to conquer that pinnacle of cricket, the World Cup in 1992. It was the victory of their raw, uninhibited talent that day.

It was the Pakistanis who transformed and perfected the art of reverse swing an art that was passed on from one to the next generation of Pakistani cricket; from Sarfaraz Nawaz, and passed them on to Wasim and Waqar. It was Wasim and Waqar who made up the most effective and feared pair of opening bowlers in international cricket. Reportedly these two bowlers had a greater percentage of bowled and leg-before dismissals than any other fast bowlers in the history of the game.

Similarly there was the Pakistani spinner Saqlain Mushtaq, who has been credited with the invention of the “Doosra”, which so revolutionized off spin bowling that no off spinner could afford not to have this in their arsenal.

Of course controversy and turmoil have dogged Pakistani cricket, its players and the people that run cricket in Pakistan for a long time. There was the ball tampering row, there was the match fixing row, both of which swept up Pak players along with the scandal. According to Atherton, it is Javed Miandad (former director general of the Pakistan Cricket Board) that represents best the contradictions that exists in Pak cricket today: “Miandad…. the greatest player that Pakistan has produced, without doubt one of the greatest players of the modern era. He is now the director general of the Pakistan Cricket Board, but he has ties, through a family marriage, to a wanted terrorist who was initially at the forefront of match-fixing and who is now linked with the network responsible for the Mumbai bombings in December and who is suspected of carrying out the Lahore massacre.”

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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