Why Pakistan Can Still Win The World Cup

In case, you don't read my own blog that often, there's a few things you'll need to know in order to make sense of how I analyze cricket. You see, I believe in the absolute hope theory, which I coined myself and it's a bit the opposite of the theory of relativity. It states that "Everything and anything can depend on anything, and anything and everything can always happen".

This is an extremely useful theory to believe in when you're following a mercurial team like Pakistan, who can be brilliant one day and useless the next. Its almost as if, the world-beating Pakistani side, and the world-losing Pakistani side, take turns to come out onto the field. Inconsistency is the most consistent aspect of our play. Yesterday, when we faced West Indies, for example, in the opening game of the World Cup, where we lost by 54 runs, at least one half of the side, namely the batsmen, failed to show up altogether.

The other half, namely the bowlers, were present for about 40 overs only; they lost the plot in the last ten (when we conceded in excess of seven an over), and the rest, as they say, is history. But fear not, thanks to our theory of absolute hope, all is still not lost. We now present you with ten solid reasons why Pakistan shouldn't worry too much about their loss to West Indies.

1. Our uniforms: Yes, you've heard me right. A mixture of both the parrot green of 1999 and 1992, and the dark, olive green of 1996 and 2003, this uniform also has the distinction of being 15% heavier then India's. And significantly easier on the eyes than arguably any other team's in the World Cup. And that counts. It may not have fired yesterday, but slow and steady wins the race.

2. Never mind the fact that our openers can't use their brains for more then 0.1 balls per over, and that the vice captain is still suffering from chronic hooking disease, at least we've still got the sanest haired squad in the entire competition. Hurray!

3. Never mind the fact that Rana Naved is still bowling trash, at least he now has facial hair. And his hair line is also less reduced than before. Things can't always be this bad, they'll get better soon.

4. We're no longer obsessed with Mohammad Sami, he wasn't picked. I'm not sure if this was a good move or a bad move (seem to have gotten over my absolute dislike for him) but yeah, a positive indeed, we're not obsessed with certain players any more. That's progress.

5. So what if we field like club sides below par, at least we're funny. Monty Penesar has famously become "a cult figure" in England thanks to his bunny like fielding, given yesterday's evidence, if Danish Kaneria plays any significant amount of limited overs cricket, he'll overtake Penesar as a cross-cultural global cult figure in no time.

5. One of the reasons why we lost yesterday was that Afridi wasn't playing (he's been banned in case you didn't know). Not only could his batting have caused some quick damage down the order, but they'd also have reduced the length of the tail, which was uncharacteristically long. His fast-ish leg spinners too might have helped curtail the run spree towards the end of the West Indian innings. And more then anything else, it would have brought some additional facial hair into the side. And that's always handy. We ought to have better results once he returns to the fold.

6. Kamran Akmal has finally started to keep well. The two catches he took off Umar Gul were nothing short of spectacular and the bottom edge of Lara's bat off the bowling off Hafeez was equally well taken. Add in another neat stumping off Kaneria to dismiss his opposite number Ramdin, and the baby faced Kamran Akmal had a long-awaited good day behind the stumps. The runs still elude him (scored not) but a positive indeed. May its the new Pepsi ad he's done (with Imran and Younis Khan as well as Inzi and Shoaib, no less!) that's done the trick.

9. We're photogenic. If we look this nice losing, imagine how much better we'll look winning.

9. Thank God Dwayne Laverock doesn't lead Bermuda, we've still got the fattest captain in world cricket, and so what if he's in a bad patch with the bat, and doesn't use his bowlers wisely enough (our best bowler on display, Umar Gul, didn't complete his quota of 10 overs) at least he's still fat, and knows how to call win the toss. That's handy too.

10. And finally, this was only the first match of the tournament, a lot can still happen. In particular, we can take selective memory removal pills and start afresh for the Super Eights after beating Ireland and Zimbabwe. Besides, losing the first match of the tournament is actually a good omen. Remember 1992? We lost our first four matches then, if not less (that is if I'm remembering correctly). We don't want to 'peak too soon' and all that, now do we? In fact, this can be a very cunning plan, we can give everyone the impression that we're really not up for it, so they'll start taking us easy, and then we can show them what we're really made of. Muuaaahhhh.

Disclaimer: This post is based partly on the "Why Pakistan Can Win The World Cup Series", an on-going series on my blog in which all posts are based on highly Panglossian theories that may or may not have relevance to cricket, taking them seriously is entirely optional.