Intense And Irresistable: Where Pakistan Won...

There is a reason why history is not easy to reverse in any sport. Because just like individuals, nations and teams also display certain characters, and it is those characters that shape decisions, performances and results, year after year. It is South Africa’s character to follow clearly chalked out, logically decided plans, and they did. It is Pakistan’s character to swing unpredictably between brilliance and frustrating incompetence, and then to wait for enigmatic individuals to lift them on a special moment. And then they suddenly come to life, galvanize together and then gather momentum and intensity like a hurtling meteor. That is just what happened on the night.

South Africa did not choke. They were just facing too many weapons firing from different direction, and one atom bomb in Shahid Afridi. The fact that they still came within 7 runs is actually a tribute to their mental strength.

This is not to say that South Africa did not have big guns of their own to counter Pakistan’s might on their big day. They did, but none of them had a night as special as Afridi’s, and in the end a solid performance was not enough. An explosive performance was needed. Unfortunately though, a script that read ‘Smith out cheaply, deVilliers out cheaply, Gibbs out cheaply, Morkel with just two balls to face and Boucher and Van Der Merwe did not bat’ was just not good enough. Kallis played a fantastic innings and Duminy fought gamely, but they were just not the guys to do it. Someone had to come in powered with a double-edged sword and seize the moment. But Pakistan did not allow that to happen. Or to put it more aptly, Afridi did not allow it to happen.

When he was batting, he accelerated the innings at a time when the South African spinners generally stifle it. And before that he saw off a hostile new ball onslaught that could easily have spoilt it all for Pakistan up front. He braved a barrage of short pitched deliveries, chanced his arm at a few, got some of them away and survived luckily a couple of times…all usual Afridi fare. The difference was that he did not get out this time, played with good sense in the middle overs and batted for longer than he has done in ages. And when that happens, Pakistan generally win.

Then, with the ball in his hand, he had the South Africans mesmerized. Well, it is a clichéd line, but there is nothing to describe the sublime quality of his leg-spin bowling better. Every ball was a question – googlies, leg-spinners, straighter ones, top spinners, there was no respite, no loose ball. Gibbs was bowled of one he had no clue about in Afridi’s first over, and deVilliers followed suit in the next. After that, Kallis and Duminy stared helplessly as Afridi bowled dot ball after dot ball, and the challenge became progressively harder. There was nothing else they could do.

A spell of forty five minutes in which Albie Morkel sat helplessly in the dug-out with his pads on saw South Africa’s chances dissipate. The required rate rose like the reading on a thermometer in the middle of a sizzling Delhi summer, and finally the equation came down to 23 of 6. It was some marvel that Kepler Wessels stubbornly refused to accept the fact even then. Yet, everyone had to face the reality eventually. South Africa were outplayed by a better, more intense and more passionate side on the day.

If Pakistan can carry this momentum to the finals, they will probably win it, whoever they face. However, one can’t count on it. We began with a comment about characters, being mercurial is part of theirs…They are known to switch off for no apparent reason. Where there is a 1992 to remind us of their destructive caliber, there is also a 1999 to remind us of the dark side.