After the trauma, travel, training – and soul searching
CHRISTCHURCH–February 17, 2015: That it hurt is good. If it was measurable, each and every member of Team Pakistan would have been found perturbed in almost equal measure. What to talk of playful, friendly banter which was the norm, not a hint of a smile for the last two days.
The design of this ICC World Cup 2015 is such that you travel to the next destination within hours of a fixture’s completion. So, it was back to the hotel on Sunday, packing-up, handing-over the bags at half past twelve and searching for that elusive little spell of sleep that does not easily visit the drained in body and mind.
Early Monday morning everybody willy-nilly pulled one’s self up and we left to embark on our flight this side of the Tasman Sea, coming over to Christchurch after customs and a change of plane at Auckland.
This was a long 13-hour ordeal, into another time zone that invariably adds to one’s discomfiture that wee bit more with the body clock needing time to readjust. As it happened to immediately follow the draining, over-hyped up stuff that every India-Pakistan encounter is, it was all the more draining.
On the team bus, well before the short ride delivered us at the hotel, Grant Flower, the thorough professional for whom duty is first and foremost, was already in animated discussion with another similarly kindred soul, Waqar Younis. Strenuous as the last few days were on everyone, three in the team must have been most pained: the two mentioned earlier in this paragraph and skipper Misbah-ul-Haq.
All three are strong of character, yet having worked so hard and seeing it become undone in a matter of minutes on either side of the break at Adelaide Oval must have for them been hard to stand.
The need for an intimate talking-to with the batsmen with everyone speaking his heart out before drifting towards their first training session post the defeat in the first encounter was of paramount import both for Flower and Younis. One is not privy to what transpired in the meeting, but the immediate outcome that one could see was a calm ride to Hagley Oval – the venue of the tie against the West Indies in this earthquake-devastated town trying and succeeding in putting its best foot forward in the face of extreme strife – followed by a supercharged. improvised game of soccer where the referee, in this case Grant Luden, was cursed by both sides – a clear indication that he didn't digress from the rules. What followed was an unhurried but purposeful engagement in intensive specialized training that lasted for nearly four hours.
While Younis and Flower put each of the batsmen in the squad through various rigours, Mushtaq Ahmed took the fast bowlers for one-on-one sessions. For the uninitiated, to associate or limit any of the coaches or support staff to the narrow confines of their specialization would be unjust in the extreme. One has witnessed in this little stint that each of them is a superb all-round coach in his own right, and that everyone keeps on complementing each other.
The training was surely of some therapeutic value, for it seemed to have lifted the spirit, apparently priming them all for the immediate task at hand – the West Indies on Saturday, which is also an opportunity to prove that the reverse against India was a mere aberration.
While the team mostly remains here insulated from the barbs being thrown at the boys back home, making them a subject of criticism of the most outlandish sort, it would be better to put things in perspective.
As Waqar Younis urged, “While the loss and the manner of capitulation [against India] was regrettable, let us remember. This is just the beginning of the event, and Pakistan lives to fight not just another day but on five more days, against five different opponents. We would make a fist of it, rest assured”.
(The writer is General Manager, Media, Pakistan Cricket Board, on assignment with Team Pakistan as Media Manager).
Photo gallery: Click here
