Pakistan coach Waqar lauds “amazing” Hussey

Pakistan coach Waqar Younis refused to blame his side after they were on the receiving end of an astonishing Australia fightback in Friday’s Twenty20 World Cup semi-final in St Lucia. Australia needed an unlikely 53 to win from 21 balls but Michael Hussey turned the game on its head with a breathtaking 60 not out in just 24 balls, including three sixes and a four in successive balls in the last over. I can’t really blame anyone. I thought we bowled pretty well and batted outstandingly,” Waqar told reporters after his team’s three-wicket defeat. “I still can’t believe it. All you can do is just smile about it. You can only try your best. I thought we did our best. What else can you do?

It was an unbelievable innings (by Hussey), you don’t see many like that around. The way he maneouvered the ball was excellent ... the way he struck it was just amazing,” said the former Pakistan paceman. Waqar said Cameron White’s 43 in 31 balls set the tone for the opposition’s successful run-chase after Pakistan had totalled a mighty 191 for six. The Australians were too good for us today,” he said. “I don’t think we went wrong anywhere, we did a good job but you’ve just got to give credit to the Australians for the way they batted. They kept the momentum with them all the way especially Cameron White’s innings ... then Hussey did the real damage. It’s hard to beat them when they’ve still got (good) batters coming in at number nine. They can maybe improve a little bit in their bowling but they are a very fine batting side. Waqar attached no blame to spinner Saeed Ajmal, who bowled the last over, or on skipper Shahid Afridi who handed him the ball. Saeed Ajmal bowled superbly in the last game we played but what can you do when someone is batting like that?” said the coach. Saeed Ajmal has been our best bowler in this entire tournament, and in the last couple of years. You cannot really blame him. Waqar expects a classic final when Australia take on England in Barbados on Sunday. It’s going to be a very good game,” he said. “We’ve seen a great game here and I’m looking forward to another thriller in the final. They are both playing really well. England are on top of their form.

It’s just a matter of holding your nerves in the final. But the way Australia played today, they are very dangerous,” added Waqar.

Khan hopes to make name for himself in America

Like so many boxers before him, Amir Khan has arrived in the United States seeking the twin pillars of success: fame and fortune. The junior welterweight champion from Britain is armed with a charming personality, natural charisma, 24-karat smile and an almost unparalleled ability to throw a stiff right cross. Yet none of that matters here, at least not yet. Because even though Khan is well known in Europe, where he's fought his entire career, he is starting all over in America. His fight Saturday night on HBO against Paulie Malignaggi would have filled the biggest arenas in London, but only about 7,000 fans will squeeze into the small theater at Madison Square Garden to see him defend his title.

The 23-year-old former Olympian also knows it won't be easy. That much became clear when it took several weeks and a trip to Canada just to get the paperwork to fight in the US. He'd been preparing with trainer Freddie Roach at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles under a tourist visa, but his application for one that would have allowed him to work was ensnared in red tape. Khan went to the British consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia, to expedite the process, but he was constantly stonewalled by the Department of Homeland Security. “I knew he was going to get it, I just didn't know when,” Roach said of the visa. Neither did his promoters, nor the executives at HBO, who grew more nervous as the days melted away. It reached the point where the fight was only a day or two from being called off. Then the news came Friday that Khan's work visa had been approved, without any reason given for the delay. He assumes it had something to do with his Pakistani heritage — his grandparents migrated from the Punjab province to England in the 1950’s — and the investigation linking the Pakistani Taliban to the recent failed Times Square bombing.

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Gatecrashing the party

Many critics and fans alike may term Pakistan’s backdoor route into the semifinals of the Twenty20 World Cup as a travesty of justice, a lucky break, a gross coincidence of errors, maybe even a cardinal sin. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who is of that opinion. In fact, I’d nod my head in solemn agreement if an incensed non-Pakistani cricket follower got in my face and spluttered his discontent about how we hadn’t even earned our place in the second round, let alone the semis.

Pakistan’s ascension to the semifinal has been a story of failure, desperation, kismet, and fortuitousness. In getting this far, we have defied the bookmakers’ odds, as well as our own meagre form, and confounded most analysts. By refusing to go away despite several attempts to slam the door in our faces we have probably irritated and upset a lot of people.

And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let me tell you something: merit is way overrated. “You get what you deserve,” “you reap what you sow.” Whatever. We won the last Twenty20 World Cup on merit and where did that get us? I’ll tell you where.

For one thing, we were publicly humiliated by being excluded from the Indian Premier League. I mean, couldn’t the franchises have just told us that we were too much of a security and political risk to invest in? Why make us go through a farcical auction process. They had to embarrass the Twenty20 champs by laughing them out of the auction house and telling them that none of their franchises had a place in their squad for the men who mastered the format.

“No Shahid bhai, Rajasthan would rather bank on the explosive talent of Aaron Finch.” “Sorry Razzaq, Delhi feel that Andrew McDonald is the next Richard Hadlee.” “Can’t help you, Umar Gul. Kolkata would rather spend its vast reserves of cash on keeping the redoubtable talent of Ajit Agarkar in the team.” By the way, how did the season turn out for you guys, then?

So if you’re looking for a travesty of justice, look no further than our snubbing at the hands of Lalit Modi’s circus. Which is why I’m quite pleased at the manner we’ve stumbled into the semi-finals. It’s like our team collectively slapped the rest of the cricketing world in their faces. Earn ICC silverware? Not on your life. We’ll play club cricket and still manage to outlast the better teams.

Secondly, you know another problem with success based on merit? Once you achieve it, you start to expect more of it. You begin to think that the momentum earned through hard work is going to pay off in this future. You’re on cloud nine and brimming with confidence. And then Australia happens and you get smacked back down to the bowels of the earth. It still hurts to reflect on what the country expected from the team in that series in Australia and what we ended up getting. Our massacre down under will leave a scar on the national psyche so deep it will take years to erase.

Or perhaps just a potential final or semi-final victory.

Does anyone still believe that to be unlikely? Unlikely is our middle name, apparently. And now that fate has conspired to put us in a position we don’t deserve to be in, it is only fair that we return the favour by eliminating a team that is rightfully entitled to be in a similar position. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.

You’ll hear a lot of 1992 World Cup references over the next few days, a tournament in which we weren’t the masters of our own destiny and were counting on various permutations to progress to the semi-finals. We also weren’t a good team by any stretch of the imagination over the first three quarters of that tournament, but managed to pull it all together when it really mattered.

Things have come full circle since then. Now, we’re coming off a string of three successive losses and our most recent victory was against a puzzlingly uninspired South African side. Umar Akmal and Afridi may have impressed with the bat, but 140 odd wasn’t a competitive total by any means. Yet, against all reason, it proved adequate. There was a point when AB DeVilliers threatened to make a game out of it in the space of one over and the Pakistan team’s hearts were in their mouths. However, AB played a needlessly cute ramp shot into Kamran’s flimsy hands and suddenly we had toppled a giant.

Then came the waiting and praying game. The freedom fighters who gave their lives for liberation from British imperialist hegemony in 1947 must have turned over in their graves upon feeling the aura of pro-English sentiment emanating from Pakistan. Luckily for us, our prayers were answered and we managed to sneak into the semi-finals like a bunch of thieves.

So I say merit, justice, and logic can go to hell. Been there, done that, don’t want to go through the repercussions again. It’s time we turned back the clocks and attempted to win a tournament like the good old days of 1992. Back in those days, no one had high expectations and yet we ended up winning the whole tournament. Face it, unpredictability is in our blood. We have madness down to a science. If our players are going to be accused of being ‘retards‘, might as well win the trophy in as retarded a fashion as possible. Here’s to a Duckworth-Lewis technicality taking us to the final.

Hindi sadhu's 83 years without food and water?!

AHMEDABAD: An 83-year-old Indian holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors who studied him during a two-week observation period.

Prahlad Jani spent a fortnight in a hospital in the western India state of Gujarat under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics equipped with cameras and closed circuit television.

During the period, he neither ate nor drank and did not go to the toilet. We still do not know how he survives,” neurologist Sudhir Shah told reporters after the end of the experiment. “It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is. The long-haired and bearded yogi was sealed in a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad in a study initiated by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the state defence and military research institute.

The DRDO hopes that the findings, set to be released in greater detail in several months, could help soldiers survive without food and drink, assist astronauts or even save the lives of people trapped in natural disasters.

“(Jani's) only contact with any kind of fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically during the period,” G. Ilavazahagan, director of India's Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), said in a statement.

Jani has since returned to his village near Ambaji in northern Gujarat where he will resume his routine of yoga and meditation. He says that he was blessed by a goddess at a young age, which gave him special powers.

During the 15-day observation, which ended on Thursday, the doctors took scans of Jani's organs, brain, and blood vessels, as well as doing tests on his heart, lungs and memory capacity. The reports were all in the pre-determined safety range through the observation period,” Shah told reporters at a press conference last week. Other results from DNA analysis, molecular biological studies and tests on his hormones, enzymes, energy metabolism and genes will take months to come through.

“If Jani does not derive energy from food and water, he must be doing that from energy sources around him, sunlight being one,” said Shah. As medical practitioners we cannot shut our eyes to possibilities, to a source of energy other than calories.”

PAK IN SEMIS!!!!

Pakistan might not win this World Cup but this day in May will become legend in the history of Pakistan cricket. Improbable odds of qualification for the semi-finals were lengthened when Shahid Afridi announced his team. Khalid Latif in, Mohammad Sami out. A batsman for a bowler, leaving one genuine pace bowler in the starting XI. Brave or bonkers? It was a gamble that convulsed Pakistan fans. It turned out to be a stroke of genius.

When Latif played a lame stroke to end his innings, Pakistan's innings was a mess, South Africa were rampant. Contests between Pakistan and South Africa are always visually fascinating. In the flesh, the South Africans are gigantic, each man several times thicker in stature than his Pakistani opponent. Yet for the second World Cup running, the wiry frames of Pakistan's players were controlled by cooler nerves.

The revival by the Akmal brothers and Pakistan's captain was thrilling enough. But the bowling performance, supported by another efficient fielding display, was exceptional. Saeed Ajmal and Afridi rejoined their compelling Twenty20 partnership, with Ajmal possibly producing the spell of the tournament. In the field, Afridi was passionate, encouraging, and foul-mouthed. An ideal combination for a Pakistan captain.

Nonetheless, it would be daft to pretend that Pakistan deserve to be semi-finalists. Afridi's team have been generally awful, struggling to find the right balance and any kind of strategy. But after such a desperate tour of Australia and the destructive infighting of recent months, players and fans were due some better fortune.

Encouragingly, Pakistan's bowling has returned to form in the last two games. The fielding has become helpful. Afridi has generally gone with his heart, his impulses; a more natural method for his captaincy. He has found form, a vital pillar of credibility for any leader. Passage to the semi-final should help settle him further. Pakistan have got off death row and go into the final rounds exhilarated.

But they could not have done it without England, every Pakistani's second favourite team. When Pakistan required England to win, not once but twice, England delivered. Now Pakistan's route to the semi final echoes the 1992 World Cup. Indeed, England's helping hand could come back to haunt them as it did then.

Pakistan will probably have to overcome a formidable Australian team. Afridi's men will be clear underdogs but that means they have nothing to lose. Moreover, Pakistan's batsmen will prefer to tackle Australia's lightning attack on the Lahori wicket of St Lucia. Pakistan now have momentum and anything is possible in Twenty20.

A semi-final berth was as much as Pakistan fans realistically hoped for. The title defence continues. Whatever the turmoil and conspiracies in the background, fans will always support their team, especially if they battle as they have done in the last two matches. But it is the sudden twists in fortune that make Pakistan compelling viewing. Doubly so when they come on the back of an utterly surprising team selection.

Brave and bonkers is the Afridi method. The rollercoaster just got steeper and deeper.

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