In a country that is used to seeing openers who build by attrition rather than fire, Fakhar Zaman is a raging strokemaker who doesn’t allow himself to get tied down by circumstances
Osman Samiuddin in Abu Dhabi17-Oct-2018Ball one, angling across him from Peter Siddle, Fakhar Zaman is all body and no feet. Ball-by-ball says he’s driving on the up but it’s not really a drive. It’s an indeterminate movement of the bat in the general direction of the ball. Beaten.Ball two, and on line this one is closer to his off-stump. Fakhar corrects himself, and pulls his bat inside the line. Left.Ball three is unimportant. He defends it.Ball four is a good one for our purposes. Siddle is essentially trying to get Fakhar to drive balls going across him and he’s got two men at short cover, plus a widish mid-off. Fakhar plants his feet and hacks at this ball, somewhere between a drive and a cut and not really either. It looks like somebody’s given a crab a bat.There’s a lot of power and effort but he times it like the pitch is quicksand and the ball made of cotton wool. The ball barely gets off the square.Ball five is a cousin if not a sibling of ball four. Fakhar’s response is also the same because to him the last ball, with its ensuing frustrations, may as well have been a ball he once played in his childhood and which no longer exists in his memory bank. And this time, biologically something clicks. The signals from his head to the rest of his body, to generate the bat-swing, to get the hand speed right, to see it right, are all in sync.He looks like a crab with a bat still, except he’s four runs better off than the last one.Ball six, the angle is still the same but it’s a little fuller. The two men at short cover are still there, with barely enough of a gap between them to fit another body. A boundary to the good, how about letting this one go, Fakhar? Nice try.He goes again, connects, and well enough for it to ping through between the two at cover. It would’ve been four more had it not been partially stopped by Travis Head. He gets two.This is the 15th over of Pakistan’s second innings and Pakistan were, effectively, 196 for 1 at the start of it. The tension has gone and things are pretty chilled, but they are going at four an over.This little tableau – how’d you like a bit of Fakhar then?***Do you remember those days in the UAE, when Pakistan were batting, usually first up, and you could actually feel your hair turn grey while they went about building a monumental total? The run-rate would be near enough three by the end, but for 75% of the innings it would be around 2.And then, as they bowled the other side out cheaply, didn’t enforce the follow-on (cue, outrage at Misbah) and chose to build on their lead and in this innings you could plan a family, have two kids, take out a mortgage, build that family home and cash in on your pension scheme, and Azhar Ali and Misbah would still be building towards a declaration and the declaration always felt like it was later than it should’ve been (cue more Misbah outrage)?Maybe they didn’t happen like that, but you remember that feeling. And the reason Fakhar Zaman is in this Test side is so that you can begin to forget that feeling. Remember the wins, the legacy and the characters but the details of that grind to get there, of Tests sleepwalking into a fifth day before waking up like they’ve got somewhere to be in a hurry? Forget those.
Pakistan is simply not used to somebody like Fakhar opening in a Test match. Pakistan is barely used to him opening in white-ball cricket. It is a big deal. For the major part of Pakistan’s history, opening has been something that must be endured. Openers have to survive. They must be cautious. They must see off the new ball even if they don’t score runs. They must be orthodox batsmen.
Or so the thinking goes. Mickey Arthur and Sarfraz Ahmed have talked plenty about Fakhar in the Test side through this year. He’s been told that he will be in the Test side, but they also haven’t been able to convince themselves to actually do it. It took Imam-ul-Haq’s broken finger to push them into it, and if he hadn’t, Fakhar was due to be released from the squad to play some more first-class cricket in Pakistan. It’s the kind of serendipity that, years down the line, makes for a great way to start the story of your career (Mohammad Hafeez might not think that way).One of the reasons they haven’t been able to do it is that Pakistan is simply not used to somebody like Fakhar opening in a Test match. Pakistan is barely used to him opening in white-ball cricket. It is a big deal. For the major part of Pakistan’s history, opening has been something that must be endured. Openers have to survive. They must be cautious. They must see off the new ball even if they don’t score runs. They must be orthodox batsmen.Occasionally, men such as Majid Khan and Sadiq Mohammad have come along to remind us it’s not supposed to be so grim and attritional. Saeed Anwar showed us how beautiful it could be. On very rare occasions, Shahid Afridi expanded our understanding of the scope of the role. And if all else is fading about him, the memory of Sharjeel Khan’s 38-ball 40 on debut in Sydney has not been totally extinguished.But the role has been defined by the likes of Mudassar Nazar and Rizwan-uz-Zaman, Sami Aslam and Taufeeq Umar and Azhar Ali. None of them bad players and with plenty of service for Pakistan, but of a particular kind who bat as if the ship is already sinking and they’re meant merely to prolong its existence above the surface and not rescue it.So Fakhar is not going to be to everyone’s taste, even though the first Test innings of his career is an irony he will never be able to surpass; that Pakistan’s sole double centurion in ODI cricket, with a strike rate of 143.55 in T20Is and 98.76 in ODIs, one of the few modern batsmen they have, could go at a strike rate of 47.47 for 94 runs; that he could change his game so drastically in response to a major and sudden crisis and then understand that his partner was launching a counter and all he had to do was hang around; above all to recognise that the freedom to hit out when overs are limited is the same as the freedom to bat out scoreless hours when overs are unlimited.But no, he won’t be to everyone’s taste. Already people are wondering how he even makes runs, despite 160 of them in his first Test. His feet move all wrong. He is all wrist in his strokes but not in the pretty and enchanting way Saeed Anwar was. He can’t drive properly. He hangs his bat out. His legside game is limited. There’s no way he won’t be found out in South Africa. They’ll knock his stumps over there, or have him edging to slip.All of it might be true and might happen; only, we won’t know until it does. Until then, allow yourself to be a little excited by the range of his two innings in this Test. Allow yourself to be a little excited by what went down in that Siddle over. Allow yourself to believe that Pakistan might have an opener of the post-Sehwagian age, who does not worry or get tied down by what has gone (like 56 runs in five matches in the Asia Cup), but only believes in what he can do with what is to come.The ball before Fakhar was dismissed in the second innings, Tim Paine told Nathan Lyon to keep mid-off up. Fakhar didn’t understand what he was saying so asked Azhar at the other end. Azhar told him mid-off was staying up. Lyon tossed the ball nice and high. Bait. Hit me over him if you can. Fakhar saw opportunity, not bait. Lyon won that battle, but it really didn’t feel like Fakhar lost it.