 When the itinerary for the four month long tour to England was decided,
the Pakistani cricketers must have expected a tough tour coming up and would have
been looking forward to the returning back to the nation because of the length
of the tour.
A tour that started so positively for the Pakistanis by beating the Australians
in the two T20 games, no Pakistani would've ever expected things going wrong
so drastically.
Pakistan lost the first Test and with that their Skipper, Shahid Afridi
who came out of retirement to lead the Pakistani's at Lord's only to announce
his retirement again at the end of the match. What followed was Butt taking
charge and the stylish left hander led the Pakistanis to level the Test series
along and hand them their first Test win over Australia in 15 years.
Pakistan's next assignment was the Test series against England. Two successive
defeats at Trent Bridge and Edgbaston were followed by a win at the Oval. But
what followed then was probably the most disturbing thing a cricketer could
have dreamt about. As the Lord's Test was slipping away from their hands a British
Tabloid alleged that skipper Butt, promising left armer Mohammad Aamir and Mohammad Asif were involved in spot fixing by bowling deliberate no-balls.
The trio were questioned by the police and suspended by the ICC before the
teams met in a T20 series. Pakistan lost the series 2-0, and went 2-0 down in
the ODI series only to pull level to make it 2-2 before England won the final
ODI to scoop the series. The controversy didn't end there as a tabloid then
revealed that the Oval ODI, which Pakistan had won, to make a comeback
into the series, had bookies aware of certain scoring patterns that would take
place before the match.
Afridi complimented the team for showing unity during the most difficult times
and showed great fighting spirit at that time. Afridi went to commend that team
on how they faced remarks that were tough to cope with and still fought hard
in the ODI series.
Pakistan will now play South Africa in a Test series and an ODI series. It
will be a home series for the Pakistanis but it will be played in Dubai and
Abu Dhabi, given the security situation in the country. There is a good
chance that Afridi may return as the captain of the Test match team.
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