Farewell, Inzi

Watching Inzemam exit with tears in his eyes during his last one-day game, I was at once reminded how much of a great batsman he was; how I admired his playing and how like an lazy ass like me actually made it a point to go to the National Stadium in Karachi only to watch him play.
I felt sad. A cricketer of his caliber did not deserve an exit like this.

But it was Inzi himself who smugly orchestrated his own downfall, failing to learn from the glaring mistakes he kept on making as a captain and treating the team like an evangelist troupe instead of a tough, professional unit in which religious beliefs and personal egos were worn on the sleeves while competitive cricket took a back seat.

Whatever the case, he’s walked off the ground and into history. And I would like to remember him as one of the country’s greatest batsmen rather than an awkward captain who used religion, an incompetent selection committee and a nice-guy-coach to plunge Pakistan cricket in to unprecedented depths.