Inzamam would probably have chosen to end his story a little differently, had he written his script himself. He would, for instance, have not wanted the World Cup debacle, the resultant omissions from the squad and the ICL saga to have marred his final steps as an international cricketer playingfor Pakistan. He wouldn't have wanted to end his career having lost a series at home to South Africa, he wouldn't have wanted to have ended hislast test with Pakistan having to fight to draw the game. Atleast, he would have preferred for it to have been him doing the fighting.
 

But you can't have everything going your way (more so when you are a Pakistani cricketer). Inzi still has much to remember and take back in the course of his career, enough to overshadow all the bitterness in the end. Inzi has fought, won and rescued enough matches in the last 15 years to not feel guilty about leaving this one to Yousuf and Younus.

One of the most significant aspects of Inzamam that comes fighting and brushing past the usual tags of 'lazy' and 'run outs' that clog the 'first things that come to mind when you mention Inzamam' list is that post the Hanif Mohammad and Zaheer Abbas era, he has been one of the very few, possibly the only Pakistani batsmen who has managed to reach where his talent and potential said he could.

If every Pakistani cricketer, hell, if even 50% of our cricketers had managed to translate their potential into actual on field achievements, we would be frowning at and investigating our occasional defeats as against celebrating the occasional wins, as we do now (but then we wouldn't be Pakistan then, but that's a different story and we will leave it for later). While the legends of Pakistani bowling in the 80's, 90's and 00's have been available in plenty, Inzamam was perhaps the only batsman (alongside Miandad, of course) from Pakistan who did what many other fantastic, magical talents couldnt - surivived, protected (from themselves as much as from external threats) and sustained his batting on the international stage long enough to be counted as one amongst the all time greats. Inzamam is one of Pakistan's very few, if not only, representatives in any World XI list from amongst the current lot of players.

Inzamam will also walk out of international cricket as one of the game's biggest paradoxes. He was all that he was alleged to be - lazy, laidback, relaxed, at times a little too relaxed, sleepy. But he was also all that would never come as a corollary to these things. His laziness came with an unusual bedfellow- one of the world's most aggressive and powerful hitting. For a laidback man, he was involved in a surprisingly large number of scuffles. For a man who was said to be sleepy and indifferent, he possessed one of Pakistan's quickest reflexes in the slips, and one of the shrewdest brains as a captain.

In the subcontinent, Cricketers are judged not by whether they have been sullied by controversy or not; controversies and mud slinging is an inherent, inevitable part of our culture that every cricketer has to go through. Their real evalution is, instead, on the basis of whether they can still rise and survive the controversies. That despite the forfeited Test, the World Cup debacle, the ICL saga and suchlike, Inzamam managed to command a guard of honour from his side and a farewell of such unanimous and unconditional respect is significant.

In that lies a reflection of exactly how successful Inzamam's career has been.

(Guest article)

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SG - GOOD ONE Unregistered | 2007-10-16 07:30:18 Great article. Inzamam was one of the best. Very well written. Reply | Quote

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