Pakistan were supposed to play 6 ODI matches in the UK leading up to the Champions Trophy but the weather permitted them to play only 4.

And they lost none of them.

If there was ever an effective way to warm up for a major tournament, this is it.

An easy win over Scotland, a nerve wrecking 1-0 series win over Ireland, which could have easily been 2-0 to Ireland, and a clinical victory over South Africa should give Pakistan enough confidence going into the ICC Champions Trophy, a tournament that they have never won.

As always unpredictability surrounds the Pakistan team. Even though they beat South Africa easily, the fans have no confidence in the team at all due to their ability to implode on any given day.

The same common theme of great bowling, coupled with unreliable batting, characterizes the Pakistan team.

However, there is a new look to it. There is no Younis Khan, no Shahid Afridi, no Umar Akmal.

I don't fully support the exclusion of Afridi and Umar, however I believe that without Younis Khan, the ODI team is a lot more stable, and without Afridi it is a lot more balanced.

Mohammad Hafeez at number 3 gives the batting line up a new look and a lot more solidity. Kamran Akmal is definitely better off at number 7, and the sacking of Afridi allows Pakistan to field 3 seamers, which is needed in England.

All the batsmen, besides Nasir Jamshed, have been among the runs in the 4 matches that Pakistan has played. Poor Nasir hasn't crossed 20, but he is too good a batsman to not come good in the important matches.

Hafeez with an unbeaten century and a fifty, Misbah with an unbeaten 80 odd, Asad Shafiq with 80 odd, Imran Farhat with a couple of 50s, Shoaib Malik with a hard fought 40 odd, Kamran Akmal with a match winning 80 odd, and Umar Amin with his unbeaten 20 odd runs last night against South Africa have all got good outings at the crease over the past two weeks.

We can always count on Pakistan's bowling to be good; and if the batting can remain steady, Pakistan can be the most dangerous team on show in the Champions Trophy.

Martin Guptill, Shane Watson, JP Duminy, Virat Kohli, and Dinesh Karthik have all shown that the pitches in England this time around are very batsman friendly.

This can only be good for Pakistan as the bowlers can trouble the best batsmen on any wicket, and our batsmen only look good on flat decks.

In Junaid Khan and Mohammad Irfan, Pakistan has got a potent opening attack. Asad Ali has impressed in the short time he has been with the team and Wahab Riaz has looked good on the UK pitches thus far. But the team will have two choose between Asad and Wahab.

I like Asad the bowler and he is definitely more effective than Wahab, but Wahab's batting just might give him the edge over Asad.

Add Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez to the mix, and its an attack that would be the envy of most teams.

I am not sure who they will play at 6 - Shoaib Malik or Umar Amin. I guess that will depend on the conditions. Umar can bowl handy medium pace, while Malik provides a spin option.

Probable playing XI: 1. Imran Farhat 2. Nasir Jamshed 3. Mohammad Hafeez 4. Asad Shafiq 5. Misbah Ul Haq 6. Umar Amin / Shoaib Malik 7. Kamran Akmal 8. Asad Ali / Wahab Riaz 9. Saeed Ajmal 10. Junaid Khan 11. Mohammad Irfan.

Pakistan kicks off its campaign on Friday against the West Indies at the Oval, before shifting base to Birmingham where it will play South Africa and India the following week.

And this time round, Pakistan's got a serious chance!

The plans to visit the UK this summer were made a couple of months ago. It was planned as a leisure trip more than anything else before the realization dawned that the last edition of the Champions Trophy is also being played in the UK this summer.

It was a no brainer then that the trip to the UK had to be timed accordingly.

With Pakistan playing on the 7th, 10th, and 15th the plan was made to be in London from 6th June till 16th June.

Flight arrangements were made, friends in London were notified, and now we just needed Champions Trophy match tickets and visas.

The tickets for Pakistan vs West Indies at the Oval on 7th June and for Pakistan vs South Africa at Edgbaston on 10th June were easily available. However, the initial allocation of tickets for Pakistan vs India were sold out.

Everyone I knew was registered on the ICC ticketing website to receive an email about when the next allotment of tickets will go on sale.

And the wait started.

Two months went by and friends in Pakistan, Dubai, and London kept wondering whether another Pakistan vs India match in the stadium will be possible or not.

The last one I watched at the stadium was the one at the World T20 last year in Colombo, and I don't have many good memories about that match.

I watched the 2011 World Cup semifinal in Manchester sitting among 20 Indians. Not many good memories about that match either.

And now I was waiting for the tickets to go on sale so that I can watch another Pakistan vs India match with those same Manchester friends in the stadium! And other friends too traveling with me from Dubai and Pakistan.

I grew up watching Pakistan vs India at the Sharjah cricket stadium. We rarely used to lose back then, and my childhood memories of Pakistan vs India encounters at the stadiums are cheerful ones.

I want those memories back.

But first, I want those damn tickets!

This past Friday the wait finally ended when the ICC circulated an email that the tickets will go on sale on Monday at 10:30am UK time, i.e. 1:30pm here in Dubai.

Alarms were set for 1:00pm for reminders and I glued myself to my computer screen from the time I woke up and made sure that any meetings or calls were scheduled for 2pm or later.

At 1:00pm my alarm rang. I was already on the ticketing website. I clicked on Pakistan vs India and the message still said that the initial allotment was sold out.

I refreshed the page every 2-3 minutes till it hit 1:30pm. When nothing changed at 1:30 I frantically started refreshing the page.

1:45pm and still nothing.

I sent out stressed out messages to friends saying that there is no second allotment for Pakistan vs India tickets and they all asked me the same question - "how do you know?"

I bloody well sat in front of that website hitting refresh like a crazy person for an hour, that's how I know you fools!

Little did I know that the fool was I. It was Sunday and the tickets were not going to be released till Monday!

Ofcourse Monday. The ICC said Monday.

What was I doing looking for them on Sunday?

Monday came, alarms were set once again, lunch and meetings were rescheduled, and there I was once again sitting in front of the computer screen waiting for 1:30pm.

At 12:40pm I logged on to the ticketing website and it took me to a page that said:

"We are experiencing large traffic volume at the moment so we have placed you in a queue to enter the website. Please wait in queue and you will be redirected to the website momentarily"

I was expecting something like this, but at least a page loaded and it had the decency to tell you that there was a queue.

Yes. A virtual queue.

They might not be physically exhausting than actual queues for tickets outside events, but it was mental torture I swear. Not knowing how many people are in front of you in a queue makes it worse and I figured that out yesterday as I waited for my turn in this Virtual queue.

It was 1:30pm. A bar showed me that I had waited my time and should enter the site any second, but still nothing happened.

Phone calls, messages, emails were all being exchanged and once again we all waited for the website to let us enter.

Then the page refreshed. It refreshed again. And again. And again. And finally the page for buying tickets appeared.

For the first time since I decided to purchase match tickets (it had been 3 months I think), I saw "find tickets" in front of Pakistan vs India instead of the usual "more info".

Yes. Tickets were on sale!

In less than a minute I had bought 5 tickets for Pakistan vs India at Edgbaston on 15th June.

Within the next 3 minutes I spoke to 3 friends who mentioned that they had also managed to buy tickets. Each one of them bought 8, the maximum allowed. The best part is, without knowing, we all managed to buy tickets for the same RES Wyatt Stand!

So now we have 29 tickets for the Pakistan vs India match on 15th June.

And London, here we come!!

It has been two years since I left the UK and I can't wait to get back to the UK summer, cricket, casinos, london bars, restaurants, Manchester, night clubs, and old friends. It is still two months away, but as one my friends said yesterday, "mentally, I am already there".

London, we are coming.

Wasim Akram, Javed Mianded, Misbah Ul Haq, and numerous other critics of Pakistan cricket have lambasted Umar Akmal for the way he lost his wicket against India in the 3rd ODI of the recently concluded series.

Pakistan required only 43 runs in over 10 overs when Umar Akmal charged down the pitch and got stumped by Dhoni.

Irresponsible? Surely. Rash? Ofcourse. But was he solely responsible for Pakistan's inability to chase 167? Was Umar Akmal the only culprit in that failed chase? Definitely not.

Misbah has no right to criticize anyone after playing that innings of 39 off 82 deliveries and sucking the life out of Pakistan's chase

And yet here he is, and here we are, complaining about Umar Akmal and how he fails to finish games for Pakistan.

"When will he learn?", "When will he grow up?", "When will he become more responsible?", "When will he start valuing his wicket?", "When will he learn how to build an innings?", "When will he stop throwing away his wicket?"

These are the typical questions that everyone asks about Umar Akmal.

I wonder if everyone realizes that the boy is only 22 years old. Twenty Two! Do you remember what you were like when you were 22?

You really cannot expect him to be the guiding force of the Pakistan team. He is the one who needs to be guided continuously and taught the art of building innings, chasing totals, and setting totals from the likes of Younis, Misbah, and Hafeez.

Umar Akmal should only be a supporting act in a team that has a lot more experienced batsmen in the line up. He should not be the one who takes on the responsibility that the senior batsmen shy away from.

I really wonder why our fans have these unrealistic expectations of Umar Akmal. I also wonder if it is just because across the border there is one Virat Kohli, who has amassed a massive amount of ODI runs over the past two years.

Kohli is an exceptional batsman; the last time such a great batsman arrived in international cricket was probably two decades ago. To compare Umar Akmal to him is very unfair.

Also lets not forget that Kohli bats at number 3 for India, while Umar Akmal usually bats at 6 and occasionally at 5 for Pakistan. There is a huge difference between the roles of batsmen at 3 and batsmen at 5 or 6 in ODIs.

Don't you ever wonder what it would be like to have Umar Akmal walk out to bat at number 3 in ODIs? He has done it for Pakistan U19, he has done it for Pakistan A, then why not for Pakistan?

Why keep sending him lower down the order where he is either required to save the team from a collapse or press for quick runs in the closing overs of an innings?

Why not give him the confidence and the freedom to bat at number 3 and bat for as long as he wants in the manner that he wants? Why not give him some more responsibility? Why not put more faith in him?

It only makes sense to do this considering that everyone and their mother complains about Umar Akmal not being responsible enough.

Give him the responsibility and then expect it. Don't expect it from him in near impossible situations.

Enough of all this qualitative support behind Umar Akmal. Lets put some numbers out there and then see whether he really deserves all the flak that he has been getting or not.

71 ODIs. 2,001 runs at an average of 37.75.

That is not a bad record by any standards. In fact, it is an extremely good record. How many Pakistani batsmen have you seen average in the high 30s in ODIs? I can count them on one hand.

Lets compare this to other Pakistan batsmen in ODIs since Umar Akmal's debut, i.e. 1st August 2009.


Now you didn't expect to see this, did you?

Over the past 3.5 years since making his ODI debut, Umar Akmal is the second highest run scorer for Pakistan, has the 3rd highest average for Pakistan, has the 3rd best strike rate for Pakistan, and has the highest number of 50+ scores for Pakistan.

Despite all this, he is Pakistan's most irresponsible batsman, hasn't learnt, and is not fulfilling his potential. Really!? Do Pakistan fans and "cricket experts" have even an iota of rational thought behind their criticism?

Besides Mohammad Hafeez, and more recently Nasir Jamshed, no one in the Pakistan line up comes even close to the sort of performance that Umar Akmal has given for the team.

Yet people want him out.

Did anyone wonder why Umar Akmal was not in the team for the first two ODIs of the series against India? I mean you should have considering that his 10 ODI innings prior to the 1st ODI against India yielded scores of 21, 77, 28, 39, 36*, 3, 0, 55*, 52, 0.

I really do not think that those scores warranted a sacking.

So why really do our fans love to hate Umar Akmal? Maybe its the unanimous hate for that surname.

Indiscipline has often been used as an excuse by the team management, but which Pakistan star in the past has not been indisciplined? Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Aamer Sohail, Shoaib Akhtar, Shahdi Afridi - they all have a history of indiscipline.

Not that this gives Umar Akmal a license to be, but he is only 22 for God's sake. He needs proper guidance. He needs to be given confidence. He needs to be given a permanent position at a certain position in the batting line up. He needs to be given a role and than he needs to be taught how to fulfill that role.

That is how you nurture a talent and make him achieve his potential.

Enough of all this criticism. High time that someone started managing Pakistani talent properly!

A series victory typically covers up a team's weaknesses as the focus then lies on how the series was won, which players performed exceptionally, and generally how good the leadership and management was.

The year 2011 was all about Pakistan's resurgence as a cricket team as we witnessed Pakistan go undefeated in all test series, reach the semi finals of the World Cup, and end the year with the best W:L ratio in ODIs and the second best in tests.

The icing on the cake came at the start of 2012 when Pakistan whitewashed the world's number 1 test team, England, 3-0 in the test series held in the UAE.

While 2012 had started with Pakistan clean sweeping the world's test champions 3-0, 2013 has started with Pakistan defeating the world's ODI champions 2-1!

Having lost ODIs to India in 2010 (Asia Cup), 2011 (World Cup), and 2012 (Asia Cup) and no bilateral ties between the teams, an ODI win over India had been a long time coming. Since 2009, Pakistan had not beaten India in an ODI, which makes this 2-1 series victory even sweeter.

I have discussed numerous reasons for Pakistan's success on Well Pitched in the past including Misbah Ul Haq, Shahid Afridi, the influence of Waqar Younis and Mohsin Khan, the non-interference of Zaka Ashraf, and a stable batting line up, among other things.

Here are three more reasons that have added to Pakistan's success in recent times, and more so in the just concluded ODI series against India.

1. PACE ATTACK IS BACK !

India's "world-class batting line up" was completely exposed by Pakistan's newly found new ball pair of Junaid Khan and the 7-foot tall Mohammad Irfan.

Gambhir, Sehwag, Kohli, Yuvraj had no answer to the pace, bounce, and swing generated by Junaid and Irfan throughout the 3-match series and were found wanting every time they were at the crease.

29-5, 95-5, and 111-6 are not the sort of scores one expects from an Indian batting line up playing on Indian pitches. In England or Australia, one might even think that its possible, but in India? Never have the Indian batsmen looked so helpless in front of any bowling attack on their own turf.

Virat Kohli, who amassed century after century for India over the past year and a half, and mauled Pakistan in the Asia Cup and the World T20, was left looking like a school cricketer by Junaid Khan.

Kohli managed scores of 0, 6, and 7 in the 3 ODIs and each time lost his wicket to Junaid Khan. Yuvraj Singh managed 2, 9, and 23; while Gautam Gambhir managed 8, 11, and 15. Virender Sehwag, who was dropped for the 3rd ODI, scored 4 and 31.

Pakistan's new ball pair has not looked as potent as Junaid & Irfan since the days of Aamer & Asif, which was over two and a half years ago.

From Wasim-Waqar to Shoaib Akhtar to Aamer-Asif, Pakistan have finally found two genuine fast bowlers that will trouble batsmen world over. Their combination has hurt India badly and from what we have witnessed, there is a lot more to come.

The wickets column might not look that bright for Irfan, but it has been his control and the pressure that he has applied from one end, which enabled Junaid to pick up all those wickets. They both worked extremely well in tandem and didn't provide any breathing space to the batsmen.


Junaid ended the 3-match series as the joint leading wicket taker with 8 wickets at an average of 12.4 and an economy rate of 3.67. Those are absolutely magnificent figures for a pacer on Indian pitches. The fact that he took as many wickets as Saeed Ajmal goes to show how effective Junaid was during the series.

Except for one, all of Junaid's wickets were of top order batsmen: Kohli (3 times), Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, and Ishant Sharma.

At 23, Pakistan have found a potent new ball weapon; and he has a great partner in Mohammad Irfan.

Here's hoping that neither falls prey to injuries, dope, or spot fixing!

2. OUR SPINNERS ARE THE BEST IN THE WORLD

Saeed Ajmal is the top ranked bowler in the world in ODIs, while Mohammad Hafeez is ranked number two. With the world's two best ODI bowlers controlling the middle overs for Pakistan, any batting side will find it difficult to maintain any sort of momentum.



Ajmal and Hafeez are the ideal bowlers to come on after Junaid and Irfan have softened up the batsmen. Pakistan's bowling attack has once again found that magical combination of 5 attacking components where each one of them is a genuine wicket taker.

If Junaid or Irfan don't get you, Gul will. And if Gul doesn't, Ajmal or Hafeez will.

Pakistan is at its most dangerous when it plays attacking cricket, and its current crop of bowlers know no other way.

The quality of Pakistan's bowlers can be judged from the fact that Wahab Riaz, Anwar Ali, Raza Hasan, Abdur Rehman, and Shahid Afridi are not even a part of Pakistan's first choice bowling attack!

3. BEST OPENING PAIR IN THE MAKING

In Mohammad Hafeez and Nasir Jamshed, Pakistan have found arguably their best opening pair ever.

No batsman has dominated Pakistan's opening slot in all three versions of the game the way Mohammad Hafeez has in the past 3 years. At the same time, no Pakistan opening batsmen has looked as dominating at the crease as Nasir Jamshed since days of Saeed Anwar.

And together, they have formed an explosive pair who have notched up 4 century partnerships in the past year - more than any other set of Pakistan openers. Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail, thought of as Pakistan's best opening pair ever, managed 3 century stands in 10 years.

In only a year of opening together, Hafeez and Jamshed have put on 760 runs for the opening stand at a phenomenal average of 84.4 in 9 innings. That is the 11th highest runs tally for a Pakistan opening pair, the highest ever average, and they also boast of the second highest ever opening partnership for Pakistan - 224 against India in the Asia Cup last year.

Not only are Hafeez and Jamshed one of the best opening combinations for Pakistan, they are the leading opening pair in world cricket in ODIs over the past year.


Most runs together, highest average, highest opening partnership, most century stands - Hafeez and Jamshed stand above all other opening pairs in ODIs. Better than Watson & Warner, better than Amla & Smith, better than Cook & Pietersen, better than Dilshan & Jayawardene!

It has been a great start to the year for Pakistan, however a bigger test, the greatest test in recent times, awaits them in South Africa. I believe that we stand a good chance to compete strongly against South Africa given the potency of our bowling and the increasing stability of our batting.

Pakistan's cricketing rise over the past two years is a story for the movie makers. This story was considered complete with victory over England last year, but this victory over India has made it all the more sweeter!