It was never luckier to have a working Saturday than this Saturday for fans of Pakistan cricket. We know most people who did were slumbering when it happened (or at least when the relatively more joyous part was happening), as others sat glued to the screens, crying green tears over their beloved team's laughable performance.
In any case, if you missed some of the action but happen to be as masochistic as our national players, here's a story on how the annihilation unfolded, drop-by-drop.
The twin drop
We are calling this one the 'twin drop' because two round things dropped onto the ground simultaneously. As the ball fell out of the sky, the rotund Nasir Jamshed couldn't help spill himself over to his left, and with it, the ball.
It made us some of us think maybe we have gone too far in vilifying the phenomenon of 'load-shedding'.
#BringBackLoadShedding
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At least his parody Twitter account is 1,000 degrees more on point than him:
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Gayle OUT = Match WON!
Yeah right, though most people did think so.
We published a post last night on reasons why Chris Gayle should terrify Pakistanis, including but not limited to his resemblance to Snoop Dogg:
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Perhaps that is why our players kept dropping balls around like they were hot.
But for this one time, they did not. At the end of the fifth over, Wahab Riaz took what was by international standards a good catch and by Pakistani standards an astronomically splendid one, to dismiss Gayle on 4 off Irfan.
In the morning, my mother told me she had switched the TV off after Gayle's dismissal, assuming there was little more to the game. How wrong she was.
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Shehzad takes a hit in the unmentionable(s)
Forgive me if I am speaking in 'circles' here, but I cannot help it. This time, three objects suffered a tragic collision as Ahmed Shehzad dove to his right in an attempt to stop Lendl Simmons' shot, and ended up getting hit where it hurts most.
He got some appreciation at first,
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but that lasted only as long as his batting later did.
New record for Younis Khan on hate-o-metre
After all that the 'senior', 'experienced', 'legend' batsman with the average of 31 in ODIs, has put the team through, Younis Khan today managed to invent another reason for fans to despise him.
He almost ended up killing Dwayne Bravo with a throw that struck him bang on the helmet.
To be fair, he was just playing. But to be fairer, he shouldn't have been.
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Enter game-changer Andre Russell
At the start of the 48th over, West Indies were 258/4. As Sammy got caught off Wahab, Russell walked in to belt out a few in the final moments of the innings. And boy, did he achieve that.
Russell clobbered three sixes off Sohail Khan in the penultimate over.
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The quadruple whammy
And now to get to the part which ruined my breakfast (seriously, what's a man gotta do to enjoy some buttered toast around here in peace?).
It started just as I sat down to my tea and omelette. I tore off a slice, and was just about to attack the egg when...
Zero gets a zero:
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Oh, ok well, that was waiting to happen, I thought. I'm not losing my appetite over a rugby player that sucks at cricket. After all,
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Fine. Good to lose the baggage early on. Let's get to the real deal now. The meat of the matter. The crux of the issue. The heart of —
The 'not my last World Cup' guy:
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That's right. Guess who went for a golden duck? The "who said it is my last World Cup" guy. He nicked it so well that even the guys who nicknamed Nick Knight as Nick didn't nick him any better.
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Younis Khan, the legend of legends, the man with tons of centuries behind made on the challenging battlegrounds of UAE, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Well done and may you live long sir!
As (fake) Nasir Jamshed notes below, you're a team man indeed:
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And of course, Sir Younis Khan, here is an appropriate series of tweets to give you a resounding farewell (no harm in hoping):
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On second thought, it is indeed a hopeless case to hope for Sir Khan's exclusion, because we have an entire lobby supporting him:
Jisay Khan rakhay, ussay Kaun chakhay?
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Mr Sticky Feet:
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I really do not have much to say about this. I think he played his natural shot here. Really, feet stuck in the crease and playing away from the body to an angling ball...this is typical Haris, our 'promising youngster'. It was the best he could do, so he did it.
Well played, mate!
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When the record was ours:
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The proudest moment of the game. This bruised, battered, war-torn nation never needed it more than now. Shehzad came, Shehzad saw and Shehzad obliged. Behold, the record is ours!
1-4 NeverForget
It was traumatic indeed. Even the most loyal of loyalists gave up:
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Everything from the team's selfies and eating habits were lambasted:
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Some took up arms,
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others suggested dialogue:
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Still others suggested that a counter-cricketing strategy be devised to combat this onslaught:
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Some political types tried to take positives from the match,
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while others decried the sheer abuse:
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The situation had deteriorated to a point where Shoaib Akhtar turned to Max Weber to illustrate just how deep Pakistan's batting concerns ran:
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There was theology at work,
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as well as some highly perceptive analyses:
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But the best fans from this obnoxiously, impossibly resilient nation were the ones who still managed to see a silver lining in this disaster:
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See you soon, guys.
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