The countdown begins now.
Six countries will be playing concurrent ODI series starting today and the brain trust inside every team will start clicking the counter to the 2015 World Cup, now about 15 months away.
Cricket does not run on calendar anymore as much as it operates as a never-ending carousel, so before we know it, the 11th World Cup will be upon us.
Here in the UAE, Pakistan and South Africa begin play today in Sharjah, with both sides in a strange funk as far as the 50-over game goes. For Pakistan, that is not an especially unusual position.
Quite what South Africa are doing there, nobody is sure. They were for so long the gold standard in ODI efficiency, outside the major ICC events, anyway, and yet they are now a side of uncertain conviction.
They have been since the 2011 World Cup, which marked the end of an era when Graeme Smith stepped down from the captaincy.
They were thumped in a recent series in Sri Lanka and won just a single game in the Champions Trophy this year. They have lost a number of series home and away.
Since the last World Cup, they have won and lost an equal number of games (16), which is the kind of persistent inconsistency their opponents usually experience. No coherent identity has shone through under Smith’s replacement, AB de Villiers.
At times, it has felt as if they are not paying enough attention to the format.
The batting order has been in flux, but a planned one. Key players have been absent: neither Hashim Amla nor Dale Steyn will play in at least the first couple of games this series.
Jacques Kallis wants to play in the 2015 World Cup but is unsure about other ODIs. He is not here and has not played a 50-over international in 20 months. Little wonder that South Africa have won only two of their last nine going into Sharjah.
Pakistan are in their semi-permanent position, in a space nobody has yet found the right word to describe.
Smooth against India and unexpectedly resilient in South Africa at the start of this year, they have since scraped past Ireland, been hapless and winless at the Champions Trophy, and won a series in the Caribbean – or more accurately, lost it less than West Indies did. They also lost an ODI to Zimbabwe.
Their problems are at least easily identifiable. Home traditionally to some of the format’s finest batsmen, they now are a curiously lethargic batting side.
They do not often start well, and on the rare occasions they do they do not have late-order power and acceleration.
Misbah-ul-Haq’s impact on the Test side is in little doubt, and even over 50 overs, he is a reassuring presence in crisis.
But whether his idiosyncratic approach to batting is a result of the frailties of his batting order, or those frailties a consequence of his own approach, is still unclear.
The extreme caution in almost all his innings is understandable, but talk of him, for example, tethering Nasir Jamshed’s attacking gusto at the top, less so. Pakistan need some oomph in that order somewhere, which is why the return of Umar Akmal, after a brief health scare, is a bonus.
As if it was not difficult enough to get a handle on how this series may go, there is the added complication of the history between both sides. Pakistan have yet to win an ODI series against South Africa in six attempts.
But the last three of those five-game series have culminated with the series alive heading into the final game.
The last one here, in 2010, was a humdinger for all time, with two penultimate-ball, last-wicket finishes and a two-run win.
If South Africa’s current form –they were overrun in Sri Lankan conditions – and shape suggests Pakistan could finally win an ODI series against them, remember that this is Pakistan and contrariness is a virtue.
If the two can steer anywhere close to that last ODI series in the UAE, though, nobody will much care about who won and lost.
Or, for that matter, about the World Cup just yet.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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