25th
The Shoaib Malik Conundrum
We’ve tried to like Malik, we’ve tried to highlight his strengths. But there’s no real way to get around his major shortcoming: the guy sucks.
Let’s take Malik the Test batsman. The man averages about 38 runs per innings. Now about a decade ago, that would be borderline decent. These days, with flat pitches and bigger bats every where you turn, it puts him in the esteemed company of Daniel Flynn, Malinda Warnapura, and Jacques Rudolph—cricket’s poster boys for mediocrity. What makes that average yet more unremarkable is that Malik has played all but one of his Test matches in the sub-continent or the West Indies, where, if you walk out without a bat, you’re guaranteed about 25 runs. That’s like signing up for jihad, blowing yourself up, finding yourself amongst 72 virgins, and getting laid just thrice for the rest of eternity. Also, a quick glance at the scorecards of his most successful innings reveal that Malik is a fair weather player—almost all his top scores have come when other players also got a shit ton of runs. Not to mention that his top scores include a whopping two centuries.
His one-day average isn’t resume material either: 35ish isn’t awful, but it’s certainly boosted by his six hundreds. And these hundreds have come against such bowling behemoths as the West Indies (in Sharjah), New Zealand (in Lahore), India (Colombo, Lahore, Karachi) and Hong Kong (wherever). (India hundreds should be partially discounted anyway because of the peculiar nature of Indo-Pak games). Plus his prominence in the one-day team only came about when, during Yousaf’s ICL misadventure, Pakistan’s middle order was a barren toxic wasteland of talent.
But these facts are symptomatic of a broader malaise: his technique. It’s not only cringe-inducingly hideous (no seriously, did anyone see his attempt at at pull shot in the last innings? ), it simply defies the basics of batting. Granted, Pakistani batsman aren’t known for their textbook techniques. But the Younis Khans or even the Abdul Razzaqs and Shahid Afridis of the world have at least conceptually have the right idea: transfer weight to back-foot when bowler’s in his stride, lean forward on front-foot to execute drive or forward defense; move body into line to execute back-foot shot. Shoaib Malik has found a way to actually shift his body weight away from the delivery when playing a shot: his body will often fall away as the bat comes in contact with the ball, which causes him to lose power, direction and clean contact. It’s pretty incredible if you think about it, and even more incredible if you actually try it (believe us, we have). So when facing a good bowling attack—which, a brief look at statsguru shows, he’s done little of—Malik simply won’t last. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we refuse to accept that he’s one of the top six batsman in a nation of 170 million people.
But our real beef with Malik is a little more qualitative, aesthetic even: Malik today represents everything that one wants to forget about the last two years of Pakistan cricket: mediocre batting, useless bowling, and the excitement of an auditing job at Deloitte. He’s also the focal point a really dumb form of religio-Punjabiness in the team, first popularized—and marshaled most successfully—by Inzamam, and now continued through the likes of Malik, Akmal, Yousaf and Misbah. Inzy gave them a sense of purpose, but now they’re just a bunch of cliquey fundos of debatable value to the squad.
But such considerations aside, we here at SouLBW simply hate Shoaib Malik. Sitting on our beds well past mid-night watching him defy, even dominate the Sri Lankan bowling attack; build solid partnerships with Akmal, Misbah and Gul; lead Pakistan to what should have been a match-winning position; all we could think about was strangling him to death with that bit of helmet strap that dangles beneath his chin. Hell, when a Thushara bouncer slipped through his helmet and struck him on the brow, we prayed for the worst. But as further testament to the futility of prayer, he’s still alive, and will probably be selected through the one-day series, on to the Champion’s Trophy, then the New Zealand Tests, and finally and most painfully, for the tour of Australia. Like shit stains in a toilet bowl, Malik’s here to stay.
