It was a year of highs, of the dizzying variety. And, almost simultaneously, it was a year of lows – of the abysmal kind. The Champions Trophy was the only men’s ICC event – senior or junior – that Pakistan had never won. In its eighth edition, after nearly 20 years separating the first one in Bangladesh in 1998, that aberration was removed when Sarfraz Ahmed and his charges beat India with great panache to land its first.
That ‘Crush India’ moment – the margin of 180 runs signified nothing but – turned on its head the in-your-face ‘Mauqaa, Mauqaa’ taunt that come an ICC event since early 2015, the Pakistani aficionados had to live up with – to their great chagrin.
While the arch-foe’s humiliation in the finale was cause for celebration, the Team Green may be hoping that it has finally knocked the Indian monkey off its back for good after 25 years!
After months of anxiety, with the West Indies close on its heels, Pakistan was so low that it could barely have made the cut for the Champions’ top eight. And then India made it eat humble pie in the first outing. When bowing out seems most likely, the Pakistanis literally played out of their skins to turn it around – scraping past South Africa, chasing down Sri Lanka with jitters, blowing away England in the semis and then doing a demolition job on a hapless India.
In T20I, it quite admirably ended up winning eight of the 10 games it played.
As overs-limited performances looked up, with the two pillars, Misbah and Younis, hanging up their batting shoes, Pakistan’s Test team is in the doldrums. Though it beat the ever- hemorrhaging West Indies in a Test rubber for the first time in the Caribbean at the fag-end of 2016-17 season – a gift from the retiring seasoned duo, a close-run affair clinched in the last over of the series – it was bookended with series losses against Australia (away, 3-0) and at ‘home’ in the UAE 2-1.
Other high points of the year were: the second edition of the PSL again being a signal success, its final flying home to Pakistan cricket’s headquarters, the Gaddafi Stadium (perhaps the only standing structure in the world carrying the late Libyan leader’s name), as did the World XI and Sri Lanka visiting for three and one T20 games respectively – raising expectations of Pakistan again being restored to a normal cricketing destination.
Overall there were at least five occasions in 2017 when Pakistan cricket was featured in banner headlines in the print media. Some newsmakers indeed, the new skipper Sarfraz Ahmed not the least of them, for being the first to lead Pakistan in all three formats since May 2012.
