Osman Samiuddin writes in his book, The Unquiet Ones: A History Of Pakistan Cricket, about Pakistan’s win at Bangalore in 1987, “a fabled test match which sealed Pakistan’s first series win in India. Miandad scored no great runs through the series, but one contribution was vital. He is widely considered the tactical spur of Imran Khan’s sides, the man who gave detail to Imran’s broad principles. From him would come a tweak in the field here, a bowling change there, a selection gambit.”
Samiuddin further narrates, “In Bangalore, as deputy to Imran he convinced him to pick left arm spinner Iqbal Qasim ahead of the leggie Abdul Qadir. The latter had been easily repelled over four Tests, but he was Imran’s blue-eyed boy. Eventually Imran relented; those who know Miandad know well that the trick is not to get him to talk, but to get him to stop talking. Qasim played, took nine wickets, and won the game.”
I will come back to this point later.
Fast forward to Pakistan of June 2022… sweltering heat; power outages; massive inflationary pressures because of Pakistan’s chronic economic troubles and the resultant price increases due to the Ukraine war; where the PTI led by former cricket captain, playboy and philanthropist, Imran Khan, is entangled in a never-ending confrontation with the current coalition government, military establishment and judiciary. Khan cannot fathom the loss of his government in a vote of no-confidence, the first Pakistani prime minister to lose government through a vote of no-confidence). In the almost two months period, since he has lost his government, he has done almost everything to achieve his goal of forcing the government to announce dissolution of assemblies and calling in an interim governmental set-up to organise elections in 90 days.
The war of words, especially with the military establishment, is going to put the PTI in hot waters. The party is testing anti-establishment politics or politics of resistance for the first time since its inception.
Imran Khan believes the best chance he has of returning as prime minister of the country is by having elections as early as possible, since his popularity is increasing — in his personal assessment.
But the war of words, especially with the military establishment, is going to put the PTI in hot waters. The party is testing anti-establishment politics or politics of resistance for the first time since its inception.
The PTI must reflect on Pakistan’s chequered political history; on different strategies adopted by other political parties after they were dislodged from power before the end of five-year parliamentary term. It would be safe to say that the PTI’s understanding of the 1973 constitution is superficial. Otherwise, it would not have made the folly of dissolving the National Assembly under article 5 of the constitution, which was later declared illegal and invalid by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The sort of excitement expressed by the party in its first media interaction after the abolition of the assembly demonstrates that many veteran PTI politicians do not understand the country’s constitution.
Can anyone in the PTI act like Javed Miandad to convince Imran Khan that his tactics will prove counterproductive? He must remain within the constitutional parameters. Politics is all about surviving to fight another day.
Imran Khan is perhaps the luckiest political leader in the last 40 years of Pakistan’s history. He has not been thrown into prison after his ouster as PM.
Going back to the Pakistan-India test match in 1987, and Miandad convincing Imran Khan to select Iqbal Qasim instead of Abdul Qadir… can a senior PTI leader, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Fawad Chaudhry, Shireen Mazari, Hammad Azhar, Shahbaz Gill or Dr. Babar Awan, convince him to abort his confrontational and extra-constitutional style of politics? His style of politics is not yielding positive results for the party. It is self-destructive for the party and the country as well.
Can anyone in the PTI act like Javed Miandad to convince Imran Khan that his tactics will prove counterproductive? He must remain within the constitutional parameters. Politics is all about surviving to fight another day.
