Sunrise at Sydney

Very well Saad. You reminded me the 1977 match and the excitement during the match one can never forget. Alas! days gone when sincere and real cricketers indulged people with their skill. You brought up a very important event and reflected a sort of message. Anyway, Eid Mubarak and have fun.

Very well written. Though I am not a big cricket fan (I am sorry) and therefore do not retain the relevant statistics in my RAM (or even my organic HDD), I read through your article with complete and undivided attention, thoroughly enjoying your descriptions and style. It was a pleasure. I imagine you taking off a little time from your main line of work to polish off a superb history of Pakistani cricket. I would be one of the first to buy it.

best wishes

I only read about this test match in several stats on different cricket sites. I donot have the pleasure of any visual memory of this game as I must have been around 4 yrs old then, but I felt like I was there while reading your article cheering on every awful mess of timber created by Imran. He and Miandad certainly made a great combo not just in Pakistan cricket history but in world cricket history.

Saad Shafqat!

I wish you would do the same for the second coming of not just Pakistan Cricket but Pakistan.

Forsee the picturesque details of the second coming of Pakistan!

Thanks for reinvigorating the memories of the Sydney test. The first vivid memory I have of the test match was the fluctuating first hour’s play in which Australians lost four of their key batsmen and scored 54 runs. The series was one of the most keenly contested and entertaining series of 1970s played in Australia. The series was definitely not meant for weak hearts. Just to add to your description of the series, I have few comments to make:

· This was the first series in which Australian umpires began the trend of favouring the home side with some dubious decisions on critical occasions. Doug Walters was twice given benefit of the DOUBT. The Pakistani players refused to applaud when he scored fifty and later on the Pakistani captain was quite vocal in showing his displeasure over both the decisions. The decisions went a long way in saving the first match for Australia.

· This was the first series in which the Pakistan side after suffering morale shattering defeat in the second test came back against all odds to square the series.

· The Pakistan side was completely demoralised after their 350 runs defeat in the second match. The Australian media and their counterparts in Pakistan were convinced that Lillie had cast a mesmerising spell over the Pakistani batsmen. However, only the Pakistani captain repeatedly insisted that Pakistan would square the series by winning the third match at Sydney. It is true that the ``Man who wins is the man who thinks he can``. To date I marvel what made Mushtaq so confident about the victory in the last match.

· Imran while bowling during the second innings of the second match was definitely inspired by Dennis Lillie’s earlier ferocious spells. Lillie had demolished the Pakistan batting in both innings. There was a general consensus after the second match that Lillie was too hot for Pakistani batsmen to handle.

· It was the first series in Australia in which the Pakistan side proved Ian Chappel’s earlier comments that Pakistani batsmen love to play the Australian quick bowlers and as such cannot be overawed by their pace battery.

· The Sydney match was the first one in which the Pakistani fielders did not have greasy palms. Zaheer injured himself in getting rid of Gary Gilmour but did not let the catch drop at a crucial moment.

· The Sydney match did a lot of good in removing the fear of Lillie’s famous in-cutters and deceptive slow delivery from the mind of the Pakistani players..

· The Sydney match was the first match in which the Pakistani public became aware of the terminology ``The Ugly Australians``. In the first innings, with Lillie bowling at a ferocious pace and threatening to once again torment the Pakistani batsmen, the Australian crowd was chaunting ``Lillie, Lillie, kill them``. The crowd was put to silence by Majid (48 runs) with some scorching square cuts and cover drives with effortless ease.

· Sydney match saw the emergence of Miandad as a player who was equally good even playing against a cunning Lillie on a lively wicket and with a biased and hostile crowd supporting the bowler when compared to playing on featherbeds in Pakistan.

· Pakistan remained an impotent cricket force till 1982 (Lords) even after their victory in Sydney. They lost to WI in the next series in WI. They had 0-0 draw against England in the home series and a 2-0 loss to the same folks in the away series. They had a 2-0 victory against India in the home series only to lose by the same margin in India later on. They won 1-0 against a lowly placed New Zealand in New Zealand only to draw 1-1 against the rock bottom placed Australians in Australia. They managed 1-0 victory over Australians in Pakistan with Lillie turning out to be a miserable failure on benign Pakistani tracks. Then Pakistan lost 1-0 to WI in Pakistan and a 2-1 loss to Australia in Australia (1981). It was in this series that Imran invented his famous in-swinging yorkers and became a truely deadly bowler (in the words of Richie Beaund) which no batsman liked to face.

Saad:

Your passion for picking a time past, mounting it on an easel of shared experiences and then painting with broad strokes mixed with minute details is amazing. The passion oveflows and at times overwhelms.

Thanks for reliving the memories.

regards

...and the memories come flooding back; the tone and tints of a happier time vividily re-emerge in the silent corridors of memory and for a brief instance, I became, once again, the child I used to be.

I must have re-played that test a hundred times and the thing I still remember past the yells of my mother promising me retribution for breaking the windows, is that each of us from that day on would always be Imran Khan whenever we bowled!

Thanks for reviving the ghosts of a care free and simple times!

Thanks for this trip down Cricket`s memory lane.
I wish that history would repeat itself with
a Pakistani win over India in the upcoming tour, but one has to find out how Sachin Tendulkar is
feeling before reaching for this goal.
Between Imran Khan Niazi and Javed Miadad,
Pakistan had an unbeatable combo.
One can only hope for similar talent to emerge
in future.
Great article.

Ras