hadi123
Test Debutant
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2010
- Runs
- 15,247
- Post of the Week
- 1
Stop what you're doing, forget about all of the bad things in your life, and read this brilliant interview with the one and only [MENTION=136079]ahmedwaqas92[/MENTION]. No doubt one of the best ever member interviews PakPassion has ever seen.
PakPassion.net: How did growing up in Karachi shape you as a person and what do you miss most about it?
ahmedwaqas92: Personally speaking, no matter where I am in the world or whatever I might be doing professionally, being from Karachi is the principle aspect of my identity. I’ve now been overseas for more than half a decade, however I still identify myself as a Pakistani who hails from the city of lights. This identity and the confidence to uphold my heritage proudly, is something that I learnt growing up in Karachi.
I understand that a whole lot of our fellow countrymen see us as a complaining lot
(and that argument does have some truth to it) but what I learnt from that competitive environment is that there is only one thing in life which will get you from point A to point B and that is hard work. I come from a small Urdu speaking family with very modest financial background and while being the eldest to my folks I had to engrain the hardworking mind set into my everyday life.
Truth be told Karachi, along with my school, St. Patricks High (where I went for nearly 12 years) massively helped me in shaping the preceding thought process; so much so that when I came across a few life changing hurdles in my late teens/early 20s, it was this tenacity I got from my city, that enabled me to pull through.
As far as missing home goes, I almost get reminded of such three times a day whenever I sit to have a meal. Food is one of the greatest guilty pleasures of my life and I was someone who would camp out on burns road just so I could get a hold of my favourite Nihari / Katakat / Biryani whenever I liked to do so. Living overseas has benefits (no doubt about it) but at the same time you don’t get Pakistani cuisine which is quite the bummer ☹ - Also Ammi, Abbu and my kid brother. I haven’t had Nihari in quite some time
PakPassion.net: How did you end up in Malaysia, and how do you find it as a place to live? Do you intend to move back to Pakistan in the near or distant future?
ahmedwaqas92: When I was 3/4th into my High School years (AS level to be precise) I emphatically fell astray and had a horrid time focusing on my life. I don’t exactly know why I went from being a decent kid to someone who was struggling to keep it together in every aspect of his life however, I became a total dud and had nothing going on for me. It became emphatically ugly, so much so that when I completed my A levels I was basically the bottom of barrel kind of guy. Maybe it was a depressive state or maybe it was something else but nothing seemed to be working for me and given I am the first born to my parents it was a very stressful time in all of our lives.
I then took an admission into ACCA as I had no other choice whatsoever and during the same time I would do odd jobs to completely support my studies and to contribute, however much I could, towards the household as well. While I was trying to get my life on track, and now this will take quite a shady turn
, I received an anonymous text message that had marketing content for career counselling and from people who would assist aspiring individuals into getting admissions/jobs overseas. I knew my life was going nowhere at the time and it would’ve taken me 2-3 decades to recover back from where I stood – if I continued to do what I had been doing. So seeing I had nothing to lose and everything to gain I replied back and got into contact with a guy named……Let's call him Mr. H.
Mr H. heard everything I had to say and took note of where I was currently and how much I was financially struggling, so instead of recommending me the usual USA/Canada/Australia/UK/NZ or European route he said that he could recommend me a one way window into a country that was breaking into the major leagues when it came to becoming recognized internationally and that country was Malaysia. It also happened that Mr. H was a Karachite and later settled in Kuala Lumpur himself but in all honestly, wherever I am in life right now, I owe a great deal to that man.
When I first heard of this I was sceptical because neither had I ever heard of anyone going there nor did I have any distant family or friends who were settled in this country so I started researching about Malaysia and that what would be the chances of success if I do indeed take this step. It nearly took 8-9 months of going through discussion boards, pamphlets, newspapers, word of mouth from anyone I could find that visited this place and consultation with my parents that I decided I would follow through. Me and my folks pulled in all our savings as a last resort and I took a one way trip to this country – I was 20 years old.
I will be turning 27 next May and in that time I have completed a Hons degree in Financial Analysis from Sunway University and obtained a professional Chartered Accounting Qualification (ACCA) as well. A couple of years prior to my current job as a Head of ERP and Data Science I was residing in Kuala Lumpur but then a Singaporean Multinational offered me a very good position in Johor Bahru and so I moved. It’s been really good and the best aspect of moving here is that the local population are massively welcoming and have so much tolerance in them that it’s almost unreal to experience it first-hand. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I’d be where I am right now but one thing I would like to point out to anyone who’s going through a rough patch in life is: Don’t give up, keep trying, keep grinding day in day out and one day, eventually you will see that opening which will get you back on your feet – never lose hope and continue to work as hard as you can because hard work (and this is coming from my own experience) trumps every and any thing in life and if someone is telling you otherwise then clearly they haven’t been in a position where every penny, every dollar matters because I have and I can tell you hard work pays off in the end.
Currently, I don’t exactly have any specific plans of settling back in Pakistan as I have a good thing going for me here but if there is political and economic stability in the country for a sustained period of time then I wouldn’t think twice in investing into a small business back in Karachi because at the end of the day I hold the green passport with pride and I will prefer to put my money where my mouth is and give back to the community that made me who I am today. For the time being, I try to pay out as much monetary relief as I can to anyone who might be going into a bit of a stretch back home but if Imran Khan delivers on his campaign promises and makes Pakistan a reliable investment hub I think I would indeed be most interested to invest in a few avenues back home.
PakPassion.net: If there's one book, movie, song, which you'd have to read, watch, listen till the end of time, what would these be?
ahmedwaqas92: For me, anything that is done multiple times eventually loses its charm, fulfilment in life is methodically similar to the economic concept of diminishing returns and that very aptly applies to many of instances in life as well. If you keep doing a single thing you lose the capacity to learn and develop yourself which is why I for one wouldn’t be on board with the idea of having a book, movie or song on repeat till the end of time.
However, I’ll get you all in on a secret of mine. Whenever I come back from work I put on music from the alternative rock genre as that is something which resonates with me while I am relaxing so if there is a singular kind of music that I would get myself hooked on while relaxing for eternity then it would be a collection of singles from Bands like Poets of the Fall, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Saint Asonia, Story of the Year so on and so forth.
PakPassion.net: Your favourite hobby, aside from watching/playing cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: Chess, Alternative rock music, and Food
PakPassion.net: How did you fall in love with cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: Three months after I was born my Dad got an opportunity to file a H1B for USA and was then recruited as a Senior System Analyst by the US Fish and Wildlife which is a federal agency in America. So ninety days in after I saw the light of day, we flew off to West Palm Beach, Florida and stayed there for nearly five years. During this time my folks somehow attained enlightenment and decided to move back to Karachi and to give up their green card (a decision still unbeknownst to my own rationale even till today
.
So eventually when we came back I was nearly 4/5 years old and my early development years were spent in a country where they didn’t speak Urdu so naturally the only thing that made sense to me was cricket commentary because kids my age wouldn’t speak anything in English at all and I for sure wouldn’t know how to string 2 words together in my own mother tongue. Spoiler: I am quite well versed in Urdu now
. That kind of led me into staring off at TV screens only just because the commonality between me and the game was that it was presented in something I could relate and understand a bit.
Truth be told I had no clue what was going on in a cricket game back then and only almost a year later in 1998/1999 I started to get the hang of how the game was played and that is what got me into cricket. I still remember, albeit quite hazily, the rapid century Azhar Mahmood scored against Donald and Pollock and if my memory serves me correctly it was in Rawalpindi as that was one of the first few instance I saw something genuinely exciting but I was too young to appreciate it and only later during the early-2000s when I basically became mad about the sport that I fully understood the significance of each and every one of these clashes in the late 90s.
PakPassion.net: Did you ever have any aspirations of becoming a proper cricketer and did you try for it seriously?
ahmedwaqas92: Growing up I was a chubby kid
but there was one thing I would do very well and that was that I could bowl at a rapid pace while using my upper body torso and absolutely hurl it down in Gully cricket via a slingy action. 
This feat got me drafted in teams (from a very young age especially among the big boys) and I would be called upon as the trump card most often. Although this attribute was a very entertaining prospect for me given as I got to play any game I wanted to, it also set in me a false sense of narrative that eventually came crashing down when in ninth grade I went for the try-outs of Wasim Akram rising stars.
The speed at which I was brought back down to earth by players who did it for clubs or professionally was depressing to the say the least. That day I fully realized that I wasn’t meant to play cricket at any competitive level so I eventually became a senior pro in Gully tape ball cricket
I do however play competitive cricket in Malaysia and have represented a couple of clubs for 3 odd seasons now. However, those tournaments are merely just for working professionals who need to have some light recreational entertainment over the weekends and that’s about it.
PakPassion.net: How and why have you got such encyclopedic knowledge of cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: I am humbled to even read that people regard me as having good/great let alone ‘encyclopedic’ cricketing knowledge but ever since reality struck me of the fact that I couldn’t ever cut it as an athlete I started looking forward to having some sort of input in terms of a sports broadcasting professional rather than an athlete. During the mid-2000s, I suddenly found great love and admiration for NFL and NBA and I would watch presenters of these leagues start their day by stating in game metrics and ending them on it as well.
There weren’t many avenues for me to try something similar out so at home I would imitate their presentation style while watching a live game of cricket by myself and do my own bits of commentary. Now the downside to such a hobby is the fact that you run out of material to say during a game very very quickly which is why in order to get more material which I could sporadically spew during a game, I started reading Wisden reports, blogs relating to cricket, and any and everything I could get my hands on so that when I do my fake commentary I would sound like a proper presenter. This habit I guess eventually trickled down and culminated into me having crammed a lot of information relating to the sport in my head and given I always had a flair and knack of numbers I present my arguments the way I do on PP.
PakPassion.net: Expectations for next year (Asia Cup, AUS/NZ in UAE, tour of SA, ODIs in England and World Cup)?
ahmedwaqas92: As far as limited overs are concerned Pakistan’s trajectory is in the right direction which is why I am fairly confident of our returns during the Asia Cup (minimum final) and in the LOI leg of the AUS/NZ bilaterals. What I am really concerned about at the moment though is how Pakistan would perform in the UAE tests against AUS/NZ because last time around we saw a lacklustre game plan and a lack of effective strategy by Sarfaraz when things started to go astray against Sri Lanka.
If Pakistan are to do well in the desert Sarfaraz and company need to have solid plan **/Cs and even Ds (just like Misbah used to have while playing in Dubai/Sharjah) and then execute them with patience and without getting flustered, even if you don’t come out on top for a couple of sessions. Drag out the game until day 5, 2/3rd sessions rather than trying to win it in under 4 days.
As far as the South Africa tour goes, I believe that would be the biggest litmus test of this young team and even though I don’t see too much star power in the line-up I have a nagging feeling that these boys might somehow punch above their weight and surprise all of us. Only time will tell how we are to cope with the upcoming overseas tour however, if I’d been in charge I would’ve selected Fakhar (just at the last second before the tour) and then instructed him to put hell to leather and given him the complete license to go for it from ball 1.
PakPassion.net: How do you rate Sarfaraz Ahmed's captaincy? How does he compare to other teams' leaders?
ahmedwaqas92: Sarfaraz’s captaincy at face value seems quite reasonable (regardless of the blips that occurred on his initial few overseas tours). He is a fairly good captain and someone who can take control and be in charge of his troops. That said, there are a few areas that might need some improvement as well and one of them is for him to keep his composure when things aren’t going his way. I’ve seen many times that Sarfaraz just loses his cool which in bilaterals is ok as the stakes aren’t that high, but in a pressure cooker knockout game during a world tournament could potentially get him to make rash decisions which might become the difference in winning and losing.
Tactically he is right up there, probably the best captain right now and there isn’t much to teach him on that front because he's been captaining for almost 1.5 decades now. Also, funnily enough, Sarfaraz is probably the only captain to come along in the last 20 years that was identified at young age as having leadership qualities, captained a few teams before breaking into the Pakistan senior squad and then led them to their first ever 50 over trophy in 25 years – a true product of the system.
PakPassion.net: Should Najam Sethi be allowed to continue as PCB Chairman? If not, who would be a good replacement?
ahmedwaqas92: In every major corporation, management level personnel are shuffled around and let go if for instance there is a merger happening between two entities or if the board of directors wish to take the company in some other direction. That said, what I’d be most interested to know is whether the appointment of Najam Sethi itself was done in a fair and democratic manner? Because if it was then there should be a proper way in letting him go that doesn’t infringe his employment or contractual rights however, if the appointment was handpicked and had not been merited, as many of us suspect, then he might need to step down and if he does step down I would go with Majid Khan as his successor. The guy is level headed and would be the perfect candidate to take us forward.
PakPassion.net: Best moment as a Pakistan fan?
ahmedwaqas92: When Fazeer screamed in the commentary box ‘WHY DID HE DO THAT?!!’ That delivery marked Pakistan’s first ever successful WI tour and buried a very painful memory of Antigua 2000 when Jimmy Adams of all people guided WI to a 1 wicket win
P.S. I am not even gonna say anything about Billy Doctrove since he might just come out of retirement and troll us again.
PakPassion.net: You seem to prefer over Tests over Limited Overs cricket. Why?
ahmedwaqas92: Given games like Chess always fascinated me, I found Test cricket to be in a similar mould and the complexity of the sport attracted me once I finally understood on how to appreciate the sport itself. This actually started for me during that 1999 India tour, ever since Sachin miscued that slog against Saqlain.
During those games I got to realize that it is Test cricket where the actual battles are waged between great players and that there are no limitations for two athletes to go toe to toe against each other and that is why my preference will always be Test matches than any other format whatsoever.
That also doesn’t mean that other formats don’t hold any value; every single format brings something to the table but as a personal preference I believe Test matches are the ultimate format and the players who get to perform in it (especially in alien conditions) are the best among the world.
PakPassion.net: Who do you think has the potential to be a modern day great of the game from Pakistan's current lot?
ahmedwaqas92: I actually rate Fakhar Zaman very highly as I believe he has all the right ingredients to be that one opening guy we’ve been looking for ever since Anwar retired. He’s been having a great run as of late and if he continues to work hard and be the destructive hard hitting batsman that he is right now, he would undoubtedly become one of the modern day Pakistani greats based on his exploits as an opener.
PakPassion.net: Was Pakistan's victory in the Champions Trophy 2017 a fluke?
ahmedwaqas92: Whoever believes CT17 was a fluke should just go back and watch the WC 1999 where Australia (who got pummelled during the group game by Pakistan) made the final by beating SA who dropped a dolly of Waugh and then had a brain fade run out in that final over.
Things like this happen in cricket all the time and I can call out 8-10 instances of the top of my head where an opposition team gained an advantage based on a proper muck up by the team that was the favourite to win.
That doesn’t means flukes don’t happen however fluking yourself to a tournament victory is a hilarious proposition to even fathom because in a tournament, at some point in time, your luck would just run out and it would eventually come down to skill. No world tournament victory can ever be fluked.
PakPassion.net: What is a better way to judge a player; statistics or reputation?
ahmedwaqas92: I actually get this question a lot, even though this one is slightly modified, but what I actually want people to understand is that judging a player should never be isolated to a single attribute, for any professional athlete i.e. A player should always be judged on his all-round skills and then on the implementation of those skills which translates into statistics or numerical representation of their performance in a given season / time period.
Solely using statistics will never yield any rational results because let’s say for example I want to select batsmen for my playing XI while to reduce my job in making proper selections, I just filter out the highest RPIs (Runs per Innings) for all batsmen and pick the top 6. What exactly happens when all of the selected batsmen are openers? This is where solely relying on statistics can simply backfire.
Similarly judging someone on reputation doesn’t make him a performer all of a sudden. As I said earlier, statistics are a measure of the implementation of the skills for an athlete which means that both these attribute go hand in hand along with a few other competitive measures as well.
PakPassion.net: Do you think Pakistan will produce another fast bowler like Wasim or Waqar or Shoaib? How did Pakistan find bowlers like those 3 in successive (overlapping) generations?
ahmedwaqas92: I am not gonna throw out the clichéd narrative claiming that ‘Pakistan has immense talent’ and we’ll eventually find our next Wasim/Waqar/Shoaib, however, what Pakistan severely lacks right now is someone with the gift, to have an eye for talent in the PCB setup. All the bowlers who came through the ranks in that era were handpicked by Imran himself who (in addition to his gifts of leadership and a never die attitude) had the knack of spotting someone and then identifying what needs to be done with them in order for that individual to reach the highest echelon of competitive cricket.
We actually need someone to have that same eye in spotting the level of detail necessary in determining whether individual XYZ can make it at the deep end. Furthermore, people throw in this question as to why we can’t produce the same type of bowlers completely forgetting that it takes supreme dedication and a ton of hard work to get to the level where Wasim/Waqar were during their time. Wasim had diabetes yet still played for Pakistan for years and Waqar lost his finger and had several back injuries and yet continued to represent Pakistan. This is the type of dedication and hard work required (at a bare minimum) to become the bowlers that those guys were during the 90s.
PakPassion.net: Your biggest role model as a person?
ahmedwaqas92: I look up at four role models whenever I need guidance, foremost is The Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for being the greatest human being to ever walk the face of this planet (personal opinion) and on second place is Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah for having the wit, grit and simply the courage to struggle and attain a Muslim homeland for us Pakistanis – I will always be in debt to these two personalities until the day I die.
On number three and four (in no particular order) I place Edhi Sahab and Ruth Pfau as the greatest Pakistanis of the modern era; nobody even comes close to these two individuals which is why I rate them very highly as well and consider their services as a role model of myself.
Thanks to [MENTION=136079]ahmedwaqas92[/MENTION] for his excellent answers!
PakPassion.net: How did growing up in Karachi shape you as a person and what do you miss most about it?
ahmedwaqas92: Personally speaking, no matter where I am in the world or whatever I might be doing professionally, being from Karachi is the principle aspect of my identity. I’ve now been overseas for more than half a decade, however I still identify myself as a Pakistani who hails from the city of lights. This identity and the confidence to uphold my heritage proudly, is something that I learnt growing up in Karachi.
I understand that a whole lot of our fellow countrymen see us as a complaining lot
(and that argument does have some truth to it) but what I learnt from that competitive environment is that there is only one thing in life which will get you from point A to point B and that is hard work. I come from a small Urdu speaking family with very modest financial background and while being the eldest to my folks I had to engrain the hardworking mind set into my everyday life.Truth be told Karachi, along with my school, St. Patricks High (where I went for nearly 12 years) massively helped me in shaping the preceding thought process; so much so that when I came across a few life changing hurdles in my late teens/early 20s, it was this tenacity I got from my city, that enabled me to pull through.
As far as missing home goes, I almost get reminded of such three times a day whenever I sit to have a meal. Food is one of the greatest guilty pleasures of my life and I was someone who would camp out on burns road just so I could get a hold of my favourite Nihari / Katakat / Biryani whenever I liked to do so. Living overseas has benefits (no doubt about it) but at the same time you don’t get Pakistani cuisine which is quite the bummer ☹ - Also Ammi, Abbu and my kid brother. I haven’t had Nihari in quite some time
PakPassion.net: How did you end up in Malaysia, and how do you find it as a place to live? Do you intend to move back to Pakistan in the near or distant future?
ahmedwaqas92: When I was 3/4th into my High School years (AS level to be precise) I emphatically fell astray and had a horrid time focusing on my life. I don’t exactly know why I went from being a decent kid to someone who was struggling to keep it together in every aspect of his life however, I became a total dud and had nothing going on for me. It became emphatically ugly, so much so that when I completed my A levels I was basically the bottom of barrel kind of guy. Maybe it was a depressive state or maybe it was something else but nothing seemed to be working for me and given I am the first born to my parents it was a very stressful time in all of our lives.
I then took an admission into ACCA as I had no other choice whatsoever and during the same time I would do odd jobs to completely support my studies and to contribute, however much I could, towards the household as well. While I was trying to get my life on track, and now this will take quite a shady turn
, I received an anonymous text message that had marketing content for career counselling and from people who would assist aspiring individuals into getting admissions/jobs overseas. I knew my life was going nowhere at the time and it would’ve taken me 2-3 decades to recover back from where I stood – if I continued to do what I had been doing. So seeing I had nothing to lose and everything to gain I replied back and got into contact with a guy named……Let's call him Mr. H. Mr H. heard everything I had to say and took note of where I was currently and how much I was financially struggling, so instead of recommending me the usual USA/Canada/Australia/UK/NZ or European route he said that he could recommend me a one way window into a country that was breaking into the major leagues when it came to becoming recognized internationally and that country was Malaysia. It also happened that Mr. H was a Karachite and later settled in Kuala Lumpur himself but in all honestly, wherever I am in life right now, I owe a great deal to that man.
When I first heard of this I was sceptical because neither had I ever heard of anyone going there nor did I have any distant family or friends who were settled in this country so I started researching about Malaysia and that what would be the chances of success if I do indeed take this step. It nearly took 8-9 months of going through discussion boards, pamphlets, newspapers, word of mouth from anyone I could find that visited this place and consultation with my parents that I decided I would follow through. Me and my folks pulled in all our savings as a last resort and I took a one way trip to this country – I was 20 years old.
I will be turning 27 next May and in that time I have completed a Hons degree in Financial Analysis from Sunway University and obtained a professional Chartered Accounting Qualification (ACCA) as well. A couple of years prior to my current job as a Head of ERP and Data Science I was residing in Kuala Lumpur but then a Singaporean Multinational offered me a very good position in Johor Bahru and so I moved. It’s been really good and the best aspect of moving here is that the local population are massively welcoming and have so much tolerance in them that it’s almost unreal to experience it first-hand. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I’d be where I am right now but one thing I would like to point out to anyone who’s going through a rough patch in life is: Don’t give up, keep trying, keep grinding day in day out and one day, eventually you will see that opening which will get you back on your feet – never lose hope and continue to work as hard as you can because hard work (and this is coming from my own experience) trumps every and any thing in life and if someone is telling you otherwise then clearly they haven’t been in a position where every penny, every dollar matters because I have and I can tell you hard work pays off in the end.
Currently, I don’t exactly have any specific plans of settling back in Pakistan as I have a good thing going for me here but if there is political and economic stability in the country for a sustained period of time then I wouldn’t think twice in investing into a small business back in Karachi because at the end of the day I hold the green passport with pride and I will prefer to put my money where my mouth is and give back to the community that made me who I am today. For the time being, I try to pay out as much monetary relief as I can to anyone who might be going into a bit of a stretch back home but if Imran Khan delivers on his campaign promises and makes Pakistan a reliable investment hub I think I would indeed be most interested to invest in a few avenues back home.
PakPassion.net: If there's one book, movie, song, which you'd have to read, watch, listen till the end of time, what would these be?
ahmedwaqas92: For me, anything that is done multiple times eventually loses its charm, fulfilment in life is methodically similar to the economic concept of diminishing returns and that very aptly applies to many of instances in life as well. If you keep doing a single thing you lose the capacity to learn and develop yourself which is why I for one wouldn’t be on board with the idea of having a book, movie or song on repeat till the end of time.
However, I’ll get you all in on a secret of mine. Whenever I come back from work I put on music from the alternative rock genre as that is something which resonates with me while I am relaxing so if there is a singular kind of music that I would get myself hooked on while relaxing for eternity then it would be a collection of singles from Bands like Poets of the Fall, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Saint Asonia, Story of the Year so on and so forth.
PakPassion.net: Your favourite hobby, aside from watching/playing cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: Chess, Alternative rock music, and Food
PakPassion.net: How did you fall in love with cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: Three months after I was born my Dad got an opportunity to file a H1B for USA and was then recruited as a Senior System Analyst by the US Fish and Wildlife which is a federal agency in America. So ninety days in after I saw the light of day, we flew off to West Palm Beach, Florida and stayed there for nearly five years. During this time my folks somehow attained enlightenment and decided to move back to Karachi and to give up their green card (a decision still unbeknownst to my own rationale even till today
. So eventually when we came back I was nearly 4/5 years old and my early development years were spent in a country where they didn’t speak Urdu so naturally the only thing that made sense to me was cricket commentary because kids my age wouldn’t speak anything in English at all and I for sure wouldn’t know how to string 2 words together in my own mother tongue. Spoiler: I am quite well versed in Urdu now
. That kind of led me into staring off at TV screens only just because the commonality between me and the game was that it was presented in something I could relate and understand a bit. Truth be told I had no clue what was going on in a cricket game back then and only almost a year later in 1998/1999 I started to get the hang of how the game was played and that is what got me into cricket. I still remember, albeit quite hazily, the rapid century Azhar Mahmood scored against Donald and Pollock and if my memory serves me correctly it was in Rawalpindi as that was one of the first few instance I saw something genuinely exciting but I was too young to appreciate it and only later during the early-2000s when I basically became mad about the sport that I fully understood the significance of each and every one of these clashes in the late 90s.
PakPassion.net: Did you ever have any aspirations of becoming a proper cricketer and did you try for it seriously?
ahmedwaqas92: Growing up I was a chubby kid
but there was one thing I would do very well and that was that I could bowl at a rapid pace while using my upper body torso and absolutely hurl it down in Gully cricket via a slingy action. This feat got me drafted in teams (from a very young age especially among the big boys) and I would be called upon as the trump card most often. Although this attribute was a very entertaining prospect for me given as I got to play any game I wanted to, it also set in me a false sense of narrative that eventually came crashing down when in ninth grade I went for the try-outs of Wasim Akram rising stars.
The speed at which I was brought back down to earth by players who did it for clubs or professionally was depressing to the say the least. That day I fully realized that I wasn’t meant to play cricket at any competitive level so I eventually became a senior pro in Gully tape ball cricket
I do however play competitive cricket in Malaysia and have represented a couple of clubs for 3 odd seasons now. However, those tournaments are merely just for working professionals who need to have some light recreational entertainment over the weekends and that’s about it.
PakPassion.net: How and why have you got such encyclopedic knowledge of cricket?
ahmedwaqas92: I am humbled to even read that people regard me as having good/great let alone ‘encyclopedic’ cricketing knowledge but ever since reality struck me of the fact that I couldn’t ever cut it as an athlete I started looking forward to having some sort of input in terms of a sports broadcasting professional rather than an athlete. During the mid-2000s, I suddenly found great love and admiration for NFL and NBA and I would watch presenters of these leagues start their day by stating in game metrics and ending them on it as well.
There weren’t many avenues for me to try something similar out so at home I would imitate their presentation style while watching a live game of cricket by myself and do my own bits of commentary. Now the downside to such a hobby is the fact that you run out of material to say during a game very very quickly which is why in order to get more material which I could sporadically spew during a game, I started reading Wisden reports, blogs relating to cricket, and any and everything I could get my hands on so that when I do my fake commentary I would sound like a proper presenter. This habit I guess eventually trickled down and culminated into me having crammed a lot of information relating to the sport in my head and given I always had a flair and knack of numbers I present my arguments the way I do on PP.
PakPassion.net: Expectations for next year (Asia Cup, AUS/NZ in UAE, tour of SA, ODIs in England and World Cup)?
ahmedwaqas92: As far as limited overs are concerned Pakistan’s trajectory is in the right direction which is why I am fairly confident of our returns during the Asia Cup (minimum final) and in the LOI leg of the AUS/NZ bilaterals. What I am really concerned about at the moment though is how Pakistan would perform in the UAE tests against AUS/NZ because last time around we saw a lacklustre game plan and a lack of effective strategy by Sarfaraz when things started to go astray against Sri Lanka.
If Pakistan are to do well in the desert Sarfaraz and company need to have solid plan **/Cs and even Ds (just like Misbah used to have while playing in Dubai/Sharjah) and then execute them with patience and without getting flustered, even if you don’t come out on top for a couple of sessions. Drag out the game until day 5, 2/3rd sessions rather than trying to win it in under 4 days.
As far as the South Africa tour goes, I believe that would be the biggest litmus test of this young team and even though I don’t see too much star power in the line-up I have a nagging feeling that these boys might somehow punch above their weight and surprise all of us. Only time will tell how we are to cope with the upcoming overseas tour however, if I’d been in charge I would’ve selected Fakhar (just at the last second before the tour) and then instructed him to put hell to leather and given him the complete license to go for it from ball 1.
PakPassion.net: How do you rate Sarfaraz Ahmed's captaincy? How does he compare to other teams' leaders?
ahmedwaqas92: Sarfaraz’s captaincy at face value seems quite reasonable (regardless of the blips that occurred on his initial few overseas tours). He is a fairly good captain and someone who can take control and be in charge of his troops. That said, there are a few areas that might need some improvement as well and one of them is for him to keep his composure when things aren’t going his way. I’ve seen many times that Sarfaraz just loses his cool which in bilaterals is ok as the stakes aren’t that high, but in a pressure cooker knockout game during a world tournament could potentially get him to make rash decisions which might become the difference in winning and losing.
Tactically he is right up there, probably the best captain right now and there isn’t much to teach him on that front because he's been captaining for almost 1.5 decades now. Also, funnily enough, Sarfaraz is probably the only captain to come along in the last 20 years that was identified at young age as having leadership qualities, captained a few teams before breaking into the Pakistan senior squad and then led them to their first ever 50 over trophy in 25 years – a true product of the system.
PakPassion.net: Should Najam Sethi be allowed to continue as PCB Chairman? If not, who would be a good replacement?
ahmedwaqas92: In every major corporation, management level personnel are shuffled around and let go if for instance there is a merger happening between two entities or if the board of directors wish to take the company in some other direction. That said, what I’d be most interested to know is whether the appointment of Najam Sethi itself was done in a fair and democratic manner? Because if it was then there should be a proper way in letting him go that doesn’t infringe his employment or contractual rights however, if the appointment was handpicked and had not been merited, as many of us suspect, then he might need to step down and if he does step down I would go with Majid Khan as his successor. The guy is level headed and would be the perfect candidate to take us forward.
PakPassion.net: Best moment as a Pakistan fan?
ahmedwaqas92: When Fazeer screamed in the commentary box ‘WHY DID HE DO THAT?!!’ That delivery marked Pakistan’s first ever successful WI tour and buried a very painful memory of Antigua 2000 when Jimmy Adams of all people guided WI to a 1 wicket win
P.S. I am not even gonna say anything about Billy Doctrove since he might just come out of retirement and troll us again.
PakPassion.net: You seem to prefer over Tests over Limited Overs cricket. Why?
ahmedwaqas92: Given games like Chess always fascinated me, I found Test cricket to be in a similar mould and the complexity of the sport attracted me once I finally understood on how to appreciate the sport itself. This actually started for me during that 1999 India tour, ever since Sachin miscued that slog against Saqlain.
During those games I got to realize that it is Test cricket where the actual battles are waged between great players and that there are no limitations for two athletes to go toe to toe against each other and that is why my preference will always be Test matches than any other format whatsoever.
That also doesn’t mean that other formats don’t hold any value; every single format brings something to the table but as a personal preference I believe Test matches are the ultimate format and the players who get to perform in it (especially in alien conditions) are the best among the world.
PakPassion.net: Who do you think has the potential to be a modern day great of the game from Pakistan's current lot?
ahmedwaqas92: I actually rate Fakhar Zaman very highly as I believe he has all the right ingredients to be that one opening guy we’ve been looking for ever since Anwar retired. He’s been having a great run as of late and if he continues to work hard and be the destructive hard hitting batsman that he is right now, he would undoubtedly become one of the modern day Pakistani greats based on his exploits as an opener.
PakPassion.net: Was Pakistan's victory in the Champions Trophy 2017 a fluke?
ahmedwaqas92: Whoever believes CT17 was a fluke should just go back and watch the WC 1999 where Australia (who got pummelled during the group game by Pakistan) made the final by beating SA who dropped a dolly of Waugh and then had a brain fade run out in that final over.
Things like this happen in cricket all the time and I can call out 8-10 instances of the top of my head where an opposition team gained an advantage based on a proper muck up by the team that was the favourite to win.
That doesn’t means flukes don’t happen however fluking yourself to a tournament victory is a hilarious proposition to even fathom because in a tournament, at some point in time, your luck would just run out and it would eventually come down to skill. No world tournament victory can ever be fluked.
PakPassion.net: What is a better way to judge a player; statistics or reputation?
ahmedwaqas92: I actually get this question a lot, even though this one is slightly modified, but what I actually want people to understand is that judging a player should never be isolated to a single attribute, for any professional athlete i.e. A player should always be judged on his all-round skills and then on the implementation of those skills which translates into statistics or numerical representation of their performance in a given season / time period.
Solely using statistics will never yield any rational results because let’s say for example I want to select batsmen for my playing XI while to reduce my job in making proper selections, I just filter out the highest RPIs (Runs per Innings) for all batsmen and pick the top 6. What exactly happens when all of the selected batsmen are openers? This is where solely relying on statistics can simply backfire.
Similarly judging someone on reputation doesn’t make him a performer all of a sudden. As I said earlier, statistics are a measure of the implementation of the skills for an athlete which means that both these attribute go hand in hand along with a few other competitive measures as well.
PakPassion.net: Do you think Pakistan will produce another fast bowler like Wasim or Waqar or Shoaib? How did Pakistan find bowlers like those 3 in successive (overlapping) generations?
ahmedwaqas92: I am not gonna throw out the clichéd narrative claiming that ‘Pakistan has immense talent’ and we’ll eventually find our next Wasim/Waqar/Shoaib, however, what Pakistan severely lacks right now is someone with the gift, to have an eye for talent in the PCB setup. All the bowlers who came through the ranks in that era were handpicked by Imran himself who (in addition to his gifts of leadership and a never die attitude) had the knack of spotting someone and then identifying what needs to be done with them in order for that individual to reach the highest echelon of competitive cricket.
We actually need someone to have that same eye in spotting the level of detail necessary in determining whether individual XYZ can make it at the deep end. Furthermore, people throw in this question as to why we can’t produce the same type of bowlers completely forgetting that it takes supreme dedication and a ton of hard work to get to the level where Wasim/Waqar were during their time. Wasim had diabetes yet still played for Pakistan for years and Waqar lost his finger and had several back injuries and yet continued to represent Pakistan. This is the type of dedication and hard work required (at a bare minimum) to become the bowlers that those guys were during the 90s.
PakPassion.net: Your biggest role model as a person?
ahmedwaqas92: I look up at four role models whenever I need guidance, foremost is The Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for being the greatest human being to ever walk the face of this planet (personal opinion) and on second place is Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah for having the wit, grit and simply the courage to struggle and attain a Muslim homeland for us Pakistanis – I will always be in debt to these two personalities until the day I die.
On number three and four (in no particular order) I place Edhi Sahab and Ruth Pfau as the greatest Pakistanis of the modern era; nobody even comes close to these two individuals which is why I rate them very highly as well and consider their services as a role model of myself.
Thanks to [MENTION=136079]ahmedwaqas92[/MENTION] for his excellent answers!
Last edited by a moderator:
