Goodbye Misbah

Being a sports fan is a full-time commitment. You invest your time in it, but most importantly, there is so much emotion involved. The expectations, the nerves, the tension, the pain. The indescribable joy and the hard-to-get-over pain. The anticipation, the celebration, the dilemma. Sportspersons feel it and we experience it while sitting on the outside. It is a life cycle. The wins, the celebrations, the losses, the tears .... and repeat. It is fandom at its peak.

Being a player's fan becomes a part of your identity. You are a Tennis fan, but you are identified as a Federer fan. It is not that different in team sports. You support a team, but you follow individual players too. You idealize them. You idolize them. Sadly, every player in every sport has an expiry date. Just how do you bid goodbye to someone who has been a part of your life, in whom you have invested so much of your time and emotion, for so long?

I am trying to answer this question right now. I have been trying to do so since last night when Misbah-Ul-Haq played the final shot of his career. There is a latent sense of sadness and it will remain for a while. It is at times like this that I wish there was some way to arrest time. But time waits for none. Often time is our greatest enemy. One wishes to dictate time but it is impossible.

Yet Misbah almost succeeded in doing so. He obviously couldn't bid time to stand still, so he dominated it. Age became just a number. While pundits hemmed and hawed over his advancing years every year, Misbah went out in the field wielding his bat to do what he knew best. Play cricket, score runs. While critics criticized everything from the way he looked and moved to his ability to make decisions, he continued to plot the downfall of his opponents clinically.

For most Pakistanis, Misbah was the odd one. Most cricket fans were unable to identify with him. A generation that had grown up watching the 5-min dazzling displays of Boom Boom, a generation which had feasted on the exploits of the famous Pakistani pace bowlers, people who used the word aggression in every sentence uttered in context of cricket - Misbah became the captain of the team of these people. Caution and method replaced aggression. This was enough to have the people up in arms against him. Media became the voice of these people. Misbah admittedly did have his flaws, basically in reading the shorter format of the game, but he didn't deserve the vilification he got.

Misbah found his place in Test cricket. Yet, even here he continued to do what Pakistanis weren't accustomed to. While leading the Pakistan team, Pakistan who had been known for its pace battery in the past, Misbah chose spin as his key weapon. A successful run followed, first with Saeed Ajmal, then with Yasir Shah. Representing a nation that thrived on the word "attacking cricket", Misbah mastered the art of slow choke.

With Misbah it was all method. People deplored him for never choosing to enforce follow-on in Test cricket. There were cries of "Oh, but the strike rate"(Yes, even in Test cricket!) till the last Test series of Misbah's career, yet Misbah always chose the safety first way. Pakistan cricket had always been about heart and passion, Misbah chose to lead it with skill.

Misbah set out to lead by example. Seemingly runs never quite flowed from his bat, but they never really stopped either. They came steadily and heavily. It is just that he had to work hard for each and every one of them.

Misbah put his heart and soul into playing for Pakistan, yet when compared to his predecessors and keeping the local opinion about cricket in mind, there was something un-Pakistani about him. Here was a thinking man - calm and sedate. With Misbah it always seemed as if he was making up for the lost time. He wanted it all.

Misbah's greatest trait, however, was his mental strength. A lesser man would have given in in the face of the stinging criticism he was subjected to by the local media. Not Misbah. All that the media ever got was his wooden face and answers as straight as his bat while playing. This strength helped him garner great success in the test arena too. All great ones have this trait of resilience and superior mental toughness. Misbah had it all in abundance.

The greatest achievement of Misbah was to rebuild and restore the image of Pakistan cricket in world cricket to a large extent. He found more respect in foreign media than he ever did in the local one. It was largely a blemish-free period of cricket under Misbah.  The team camaraderie during his tenure was great too. Misbah found the perfect partner in Younis Khan, and he in Misbah. Honesty, dedication, and hard work replaced flamboyance, and became the fundamental pillars of the Pakistan Team

Pakistan at large should forever be grateful to Misbah. That for Misbah Pakistan always came first, that Misbah gave Pakistan Cricket his all, that for Misbah nothing was bigger than cricket, should never be doubted.

I hate goodbyes. It is exceptionally hard to say goodbye to someone you have followed so ardently over the past few years. Someone like Misbah. There will be other players. There will be players bigger and better than Misbah. But there will never be another Misbah.