SHARJAH // Every time Mohammad Hafeez comes out to bat these days, a clique of Pakistani cricket fans take to the virtual world and derive great pleasure in mocking the “Professor”.
They dole out his statistics, a below-par average (29.02 before the start of the game) for a No 3 batsman in one-day internationals.
But as Navjot Singh Sidhu was so fond of saying, statistics often hide more than they reveal. And in Hafeez’s case, they hide a very pertinent fact: he has played only 15 of his 139 ODIs at home in Pakistan, the last of which was in 2007. In cricket, playing at home and batting averages are directionally proportional, more so in the subcontinent.
Of course, that matters little to those critics. They joke about the “blue moon” and Hafeez’s seven ODI centuries across 11 years. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for Pakistan, the blue moon was out again last night, for the second successive match at Sharjah, glistening in all its glory.
Hafeez, who had broken through his lean spell with a 122 in the first ODI of the five-match series in Dubai, scripted a brilliant, unbeaten 140 (136 balls, 11 fours and three sixes), his highest score in 50-overs cricket, last night as Pakistan posted an impressive 326 for five.
The bowlers, led by the returning Umar Gul, then restricted Sri Lanka to 213 for an impressive 113-run victory and took a 2-1 lead in the series.
This was Pakistan’s 78th win at Sharjah in 117 matches, which equals Australia’s record at Sydney for the most ODI victories at a single venue.
Gul (three for 19), who injured his knee in an ODI against South Africa in March and had to undergo knee surgery, was making his first international appearance in nine months after flying in from Pakistan the night before. The 29-year-old paceman was called in as cover and replaced the misfiring Sohail Tanvir in the starting XI.
Facing their highest successful run-chase, Sri Lanka were three down for 44 in nine overs, put on the back-foot by, first, Gul’s double strike in the fourth over of the innings and then Junaid Khan’s dismissal of Kumar Sangakkara.
Tillakaratne Dilshan (59) and Dinesh Chandimal (36) tried to repair the damage in a 59-run partnership for the fourth wicket, but when Dilshan departed, bowled by Shahid Afridi in the 22nd over, the asking rate was a challenging 7.85 and by the 30th over, it had climbed to 9.60.
In trying to rein in that mountain, the incoming batsmen were forced to take their chances, but it did not come off for them on the night and captain Angelo Mathews (41) was left waging a lone and losing battle.
The Sri Lankans missed someone like Hafeez to shore one end up. Dropped by Lasith Malinga at long-on on 26, he was again the rock around which the Pakistan innings was built after a sedate start.
Playing on the same shiny surface that had produced 633 runs in the first ODI, Pakistan were rocked early as Nuwan Kulasekara, who did not make it to the field for the first game, uprooted Sharjeel Khan’s stumps in the third over with only two on the board.
The scoreboard crawled to 18 from seven overs before Hafeez and Ahmed Shehzad, Pakistan’s two centurions in the series, started to accelerate, and by the 36th over they had inched ahead of their scoring rate from the first game.
In between, though, Pakistan had lost a second wicket – Shehzad run out for 81 after a 160-run partnership with Hafeez, courtesy of a superb effort by Malinga in his follow through.
The scoring rate never dropped, though, as cameos from Sohaib Maqsood (21 off 21 balls), Misbah-ul-Haq (40 off 24 balls) and Umar Akmal (23 from 12 balls) helped Pakistan score 105 runs from their last 10 overs.
arizvi@thenational.ae
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