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Journalism of Courage
Inzamam-UL-Haq reminds me of a banyan tree; huge immovable, cool, soothing, roots everywhere you see; roots that can slow you down or roots that can provide strength. There is a timelessness about him that makes urgency seem an irrelevant fetish. And yet he also reminds me of a sitar player who plucks each string carefully, each motion designed to produce a specific piece of music, every note in place and unhurried; occasionally glancing at the tabalchi, giving him a moment and moving on.
He8217;s not the prancing guitarist, no extraordinary flurry of activity to produce a short, breathtaking burst of music. He8217;s unlikely to say 8216;8216;aah, baby8217;8217; everytime a word eludes him. The world needs those too, only they were born elsewhere; where the wind had several appointments to keep in a day.
And now it is hard to imagine that Inzamam came into world cricket as a destroyer. He played an extraordinary New Zealand side, for whom the whole had a ridiculous exponential relation to the sum of the parts, twice in a few days in the 1992 World Cup and broke as many hearts as is possible in a country of such few. Suddenly the world was watching him and listening to Imran Khan, the finest picker of talent in the game. We were in Australia before the World Cup when Imran8217;s opinion on a relatively unknown Inzamam became known. Then, like now, he found creative ways of getting run out and people had begun to wonder if Imran had played a mind game by throwing in this lumbering young giant. He was to justify his captain8217;s faith; like Wasim and Waqar did. It8217;s not a bad trio that and who knows Imran as prime minister might discover a similar defence, finance and home minister!
But this lumbering giant had another quality. He had eyes that spotted things before a predator, a trickster or a politician could. He was a great judge of length and pace and so seemed to have the time against bowlers when others seemed to be as much in haste as a just departed train.
And word began filtering through that the best player against Waqar and Wasim in their prime was Inzamam in the nets.
His laidback style seemed to push the headlines away. And so while the world talked of Tendulkar and Mark Waugh, of an emerging Lara and in course of time of an emerging Ponting, there wasn8217;t the same flurry of adjectives with Inzamam. Two years after that World Cup I saw him decimate New Zealand again at Sharjah and he was as brutal as his style would allow him to. It wasn8217;t just a flat deck and a reluctant attack, it was a batsman who wore the cloak of majesty.
Now he is captain and must be seen to be here, there and everywhere on the field. He must dart between press conferences, interviews, practice sessions, selection committee meetings and barbs from volatile team-mates.
These are not slings and arrows, for Inzamam, they seem to be mines and missiles and clearly he does not enjoy them. He is a reluctant leader of men for he must then escape his world and embrace another. When the little child runs in and says 8216;8216;abbu, abbu, dekhiye to kya ho raha hai8217;8217; he must bound out of his chair and say 8216;8216;chalo dekhte hain abhi8217;8217;.
To be captain of Pakistan is to be permanently on the war-front, to be a Chengis Khan or a Mahmud of Ghazni. Inzamam is more Bahadur Shah Zafar, to whom the ghazal was more important than the cannon. His dynasty had seen Babar and Aurangazeb, only the occasional Shah Jahan, but the last Mughal emperor was more likely to go into battle saying 8216;8216;wah bhai Zauq, ek aur sher sunaen8217;8217; or 8216;8216;miyan Ghalib, is jang ke baare me aapki kalam kya kehti hai?8217;8217;
But unlike Bahadur Shah Zafar who wasn8217;t much of a warrior and ended up being imprisoned, Inzamam can bat. He won8217;t be imprisoned and he has been one of the highlights of his era and this series.
