Jewel in the crown

Maybe it’s time Javed Miandad went scouting round those gallis in Pakistan for the Irfan Pathans he said existed everywhere. Perhaps th...

Maybe it’s time Javed Miandad went scouting round those gallis in Pakistan for the Irfan Pathans he said existed everywhere. Perhaps then he will find someone who, at 19, can revel under pressure and perform like a seasoned practitioner.

Or perhaps not, because someone like Pathan doesn’t crop very often. All of 12 ODIs old, bowling in the 130-140 kmph speed range, Pathan could have been picked apart by the established Pakistani batting. But he showed that there was more to fast bowling than a speed demon running in from the boundary line and terrorising the batsmen.

While Shoaib and Co seemed to be in contest with the speedgun, Irfan had his mind focused on the rival batsmen. The result: Pathan, with eight wickets in three matches, led a disciplined attack which easily defended a score of 293 a day after the so-called dream Pakistan pace attack had conceded the same number of runs in 45 overs.

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After the match, an exasperated Imran Khan — who knows a thing or two about pace bowling — called on his country’s pacers to learn from their Indian counterpart.

What made his bowling today so special? For one, he had a plan for every Pakistan batsman:

• In the 4th ODI Pathan trapped Yousuf Youhana lbw with a ball which came in late. Today the batsman again seemed to be committing to the front foot so Pathan just repeated the ball and got the wicket.

• While he knew Youhana’s weakness, he had to think on his feet to dismiss newcomer Taufeeq Umar. He noticed Taufeeq’s unguarded leg-stump when the batsman played his drives. A slower off-break pitched outside the off beat the bat and hit the leg-stump.

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• His third victim of the day was Younis Khan, who seemed to be forging a threatening partnership with Inzamam-ul Haq. For that he used an old trick. After denying him any space by pitching right on the stumps and stopping the run flow, he bowled the sucker ball — a full-pitched ball way outside the off stump. Younis’s eyes lit up but he mistimed the drive to be caught by Yuvraj at point.

After the match Pathan talked about how the time spent observing the first two games while on the bench had helped him shape a game plan. And at Lahore today the plan worked perfectly like it had last year at the same ground, during the Asia Cup against Bangladesh.

While the nine-wicket haul against Bangladesh juniors got him a place in the national team today his spell of 3/33 might change the way pacers bowl on the dead sub-continent tracks.

It might also send Javed Miandad in search of Irfan Pathan lookalikes. He should be so lucky.