From: moghal@aludra.usc.edu (Nadeem Moghal)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Pakistan's Best Captain
Date: 29 Aug 1992 13:46:31 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

In article <1992Aug22.011557.9546@julian.uwo.ca> raza@sarek.ccs.uwo.ca (Mr. Raza Syed) writes:


>Imran also had good team first of all he himself was at his very best  then 
>Miandad,Zaheer, Sarfraz, bari, raja, Iqbal qasim/qadir! mudassir etc all were
>in good form those days, 

Not to emntion Mohsin Hasan Khan, who became the first Pakistani ever to
cross a thousand runs in a calendar year. (1982) He was begining to Blossom
on the Australian tour of 1981-82, when the revolt against Javed Miandad
first came on the surface. Then he had a great series against England, and
then against Australia and India. In the last one, he was at his peak in 
the first test (94 & 101*), but then hit the bottom for the next four 
tests. There was a very strong public support for Qasim Umar, an opening
bat for Muslim Commercial Bank, who was doing wonders in the First Class 
circuit, and was breaking all sorts of records. But then, Mohsin was
persisted with, and he returned to form with a 91 in the final test,
having a hefty partnership with Mudassar Nazar (152).

Vow, that was a *big* detour, if ever there was one!


>secondly teams performance remained unchanged for
>quite a number of years, pakistan lost series to England then WC then series
>in Australia, pakistan's first major succes under imran's captainship was
>in Australasia cup 1986 four years after becoming the captain, imran remains
>absent due to shin injury in three home and two away series during that
>period.

Wait a minute, here. What year was that when Pakistan had these opponents
in this sequence? As far as my memory serves me, the chronology went like
this:

(Order: Played, Won, Lost, Drawn)                                

    1982      England     (Away)  Tests     3  1  2  0
                                  One-Day   2  0  2  0

This was a very closely-faught encounter, and there was very little 
thats eparated the two sides. It was, in fact. David Gower who went
on record saying that it was the closest series of this century, and
that the better side lost!
 
    1982-83   Australia   (Home)  Tests    3  3  0  0
                                  One Day  3  2  0  1

The first clean-sweep in the history of Pak-Cricket. Well, the second
if you also count an occasion when the tables were turned! (In 1972-73,
Ian Chappell's side inflicted a 3-3-0-0 defeat on Intikhab Alam's team.
The history, however, shows that Pakistan could have come home with a 2-1
win, had they not succeeded in snatching defeats from the jaws of victory
at Melbourne and Sydney.)

     1982-83  India        (Home)  Tests    6  3  0  3
                                   One Day  5  4  1  0  (I'm not too sure
                                                         about this one.)

     1983     World Cup    (Away)  SL (won), NZ (lost), ENG (lost)
                                   SL (won), Eng (lost), NZ (won)
                                   Semi vs WI (lost)

As far as Imran's first major success is concerned, I would point at the
82-83 rubber against the Indians.

But the point raised by Mr. S.R. Raza is also valid, in that the Austral-
asia Cup victory was the first time the Pakistani team had ever won any 
tournament. In fact, as far as memory serves me, it was the first time
Pakistani had achieved a daunted target in a limited over game. (The proof
of this would be a very long, but an extremely exciting discussion. But
I'll just put it off for some other time.)

 
>S.R.Raza.

Nadeem Moghal
USC