Abdullah719
T20I Captain
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2013
- Runs
- 44,825
Many thanks to [MENTION=43242]Dr_Bassim[/MENTION] for his insightful answers... have a read!
PakPassion: Can Pakistan win the World Cup?
Dr_Bassim: I think when you ask such a question, you have to be clear in what the implication is? Can Afghanistan win the World Cup? Can Bangladesh win the World Cup? Yes. But the odds of winning are much less than the established teams, simply because they don’t have the right players and a team that’s good enough to go all the way and not enough experience to win the whole thing.
So, can Pakistan can win the World Cup? Yes. Will Pakistan win the World Cup? Seems unlikely because of many factors.
PakPassion: Are you a doctor by choice or by parental pressure? And what is your field of specialisation?
Dr_Bassim: I am a doctor by choice and parents’ wishes. I’ll share an anecdote.
Ever since I was young, I used to read a lot and loved reading everything. Believe me, I was 7 when I used to read my sister’s Pakistan Studies book and then when I finished everything, I took a strange liking to reading Encyclopaedias. My parents were fascinated and asked if I understood anything, but I told them No. They asked me why I read it, and I replied, “Because one day I will.”
Since that day I have devoured all sorts of books, fiction or non-fiction, medical, geography, physics, chemistry anything that I could lay my hand on. Seeing my interest in reading, my parents suggested being a doctor. I had heard that being a doctor was a highly challenging field and naturally my curiosity was aroused.
I have no regrets going into this field and being a clinical medicine specialist, I cherish my job with great degree of enthusiasm. I love to teach medicine, and one day aspire to help medical students reach high levels of success by opening my own medical school.
PakPassion: What do you think about the future of Pakistani cricket? Do you think we will ever rule the roost, or will we always remain at the level of mediocrity we are experiencing these days?
Dr_Bassim: What a strange question! Nothing remains the same. After every darkness there is light, after every night there is day. Look at the progress of the universe. Nothing remains constant. So why would you believe that we would be mediocre all the time?
If you ask, will we ever be as good as Australia of yesteryear, that is a more difficult answer because you need 5 or 6 world-class players to rule the world and they were lucky to have those at the same time and it would be incredibly difficult for ANYONE to replicate.
But if we want to punch above our weight, you ONLY really need 1 world-class batsmen interspersed with above average batsmen and 2 world-class bowlers. And Pakistan is not far off from them.
PakPassion: How has your marriage impacted your life?
Dr_Bassim: Marriage is brilliant. Before you are only answerable to yourself and you are a fool. With marriage, you are answerable to someone else and you are no longer a fool.
Your personal growth and your mental growth is when you decide to share your life with someone no matter what the conditions and what the situation. It is sometimes a compromise and sometimes it feels you are living the dream.
But no matter what happens, the promise of living with someone is the best feeling in the world and it brings out the best in you.
PakPassion: Why have you supported Misbah-ul-Haq? Do you think he could still play?
Dr_Bassim: I supported Misbah because despite his limitations he carried his limited team with respect and honour. The performances did not suffer because of him, but because we were going through a lean phase in batting at that time.
Misbah was no visionary, that was his major limitation. He rarely tinkered with set combinations and wanted everyone to avoid defeat first and then go for the win.
Not everyone can be happy, but the way he stayed away from controversies during his tenure and we rarely heard a blip during his team, speaks for his man management skills.
So, can he still play? No.
Just like a 75-year-old surgeon probably could get away with performing lifesaving surgery, it doesn’t’ mean he should be handling the knife, similarly just because Misbah could probably get away by slotting in the team instead of Malik, doesn’t mean he should enter the team.
PakPassion: You were recently quite anti-Indian during the recent Pakistan-India war situation, are you always like that or did the whole atmosphere made you that way?
Dr_Bassim: What do you want me to say? I should support India while they enter our country looking for terrorists oblivious to the international boundaries and norms? They have been rightly humiliated.
PakPassion: Umar Akmal – a flawed genius or a waste of time?
Dr_Bassim: Waste of time. Listen, I am not saying he cannot turn over a new leaf. But he has been given countless chances at every place conceivable and the number of excuses you throw out for him, would even make Afridi smile.
Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses and accept that you made a wrong investment.
We are still hell-bent on trying to squeeze the remaining juice out an orange after it has been squeezed 50 times. At some point, we have to realise the juice just isn’t there.
PakPassion: How did you become a Pakistan cricket fan?
Dr_Bassim: I was a cricket fan since I was born, I think. I remember Pakistan winning the 92 World Cup when I was barely a little boy and that image travelled with me forever.
But after the ‘96 debacle, I kind of lost interest and became more of a realistic person.
Since ‘99, I have always criticised and castigated the team, not because I hate them, but because it has always gone from bad to worse.
So if you feel I am tough on the players, I have seen 20 years of random performances and it makes you want to laugh most of the times.
PakPassion: Looking back at all the great knocks of the years, what is the most stand out Pakistani and non-Pakistani knock you have seen?
Dr_Bassim: In terms of Pakistani one, I would say Saeed Anwar’s 194. Beyond the years when it was thought that such knocks were a regular occurrence and he did it when cricket was much different. Shahid Afridi’s Kanpur knock also comes to mind.
As for a non-Pakistani innings of greatness, I haven’t really rated much in my opinion, but any World Cup defining knock is good so I would take Gilchrist in the World Cup finals.
PakPassion: Out of Sarfaraz Ahmed, Mickey Arthur and Inzamam-ul-Haq, who deserves most of the blame for Pakistan's failures of late?
Dr_Bassim: I have thought about this question a lot.
It's hard to find who deserves the most blame. Let’s start from the CT ‘17 win when everything was perfect, Sarfaraz was the ideal captain, Mickey the ideal coach, and Inzi the perfect selector.
In comes the New Zealand tour, and things went wrong suddenly. Was it Sarfaraz’s fault for losing 5-0? Would be harsh to label it as such. Mickey? Highly unlikely. Inzi, even less so. One series 5-0 loss probably the team played below standards.
But continuous below standard performance is bound to get noticed and it’s been 2 years since we are struggling in ODIs because of poor batting and bowling.
I think Sarfaraz is a great T20 captain, an adequate ODI captain and a poor Test Captain.
Mickey is irrelevant in T20 as a coach, a below average ODI coach, and a poor Test coach.
Inzi is irrelevant in T20 as a selector, poor ODI selector, and a poor Test selector.
Looking at the above scenario, I would blame Inzi for not giving the right players the most, in 2nd position would be Mickey for not realizing he is not good enough and last of all Sarfaraz because if he is given a better team, he might create some problems for the opposition, but if you give an adequate captain an average team, he will not create anything out of it, as we have seen in the last 2 years.
That’s not to say Sarfaraz doesn’t have his faults. He has many. But that’s another thread altogether.
PakPassion: Pakistan differs from all other major cricket nations in having a more devout population which accepts religious instruction unquestioningly. But far beyond that, what people in Australia or New Zealand or England or South Africa value as the positive attribute of critical analysis in Pakistan is condemned as blasphemy. Has this lack of critical analysis affected the development of modern Pakistani cricketers?
Dr_Bassim: This is based on the social stigma we have created in Pakistan.
Interesting that while you talk about religion, while this is more related to the cultural inhibitions of Pakistan.
Since we are born, we have been inculcated to NOT accept our mistake as a cultural norm, because the people who DO accept that they are at fault, our society runs over them and blames them for everything.
This creates a natural resistance in ourselves to introspect and accept our faults or do any critical analysis as the society will not respect individuals who impart themselves the blame.
Imagine Imran Khan saying it’s my fault that this project failed. The hue and cry would be so high, that he would be immediately asked to resign. Imagine Nawaz Sharif saying that upon critical analysis and introspection I find, that I have indeed not done justice to my abilities as Prime Minister. Do you think they will be forgiven?
In such a stale environment where accepting shortcomings and doing critical analysis is looked down upon, and cheating and being oblivious to faults is rewarded with high positions, it’s not surprise the “Professor“ even managed to give sound advice by saying “Nothing wrong with my technique”.
PakPassion: You had strict atheistic views and then over time you found your path back to Islam. Can you describe what inspired you back to religion?
Dr_Bassim: I decided to answer this question last, because it makes sense.
I was never completely an atheist, but I was just a liberal Muslim, if such a term exists.
I was more of a believer in science and less of a believer in miracles and God and all the Testaments.
Listen, I was the guy who used to go to the bathroom with music crashing in the bathroom. But Alhamdulillah lots of things have changed.
My wife and my beautiful daughter are also responsible for making this change, because when they came into my life, my life changed drastically, and I could no longer pretend to live the bachelor life of clubs, dancing and music.
I realised that all my life I have wasted my time on attaining wealth, on attaining the latest cars, on becoming richer and richer but it’s pointless. What is the point of anything? Did Allah SWT create this world in vain? I became more and more perturbed by these questions and I underwent a depressive/cyclothymic phase where nothing seemed to interest me anymore.
At some point then it clicked. I don’t know how it happened, but it just did.
I realised all my medical degrees, all my life things, the billion dollars if I ever get, the Porsche that I am looking to buy are all material things. They will all end. Very soon. Nothing will stay except the concept of Permanence which in Islam is the concept of Jannah. And I decided I will follow my true religion because there is more peace in it.
I don’t regret any moment since I’ve made that decision. Stopped listening to music and instead I started listening to Quran. The more I listened to Al Mishary, the closer I touched spirituality.
I have realised that I have got all qualifications, but I never bothered memorising the Book of Allah/God. I have decided to devote my energies to this. Its late, but better late than never.
I get criticised for it a lot, though. How you, a man of science, a Doctor of Medicine, can actually believe in God, Allah and miraculous happenings. How can someone giving antibiotics for an infection, believe in the power of Healing through God? This is the question that most of the doubters or atheists put forward to me.
The only answer is I don’t know. If I am giving antibiotics, I believe that they are the source of healing and recovery and final healing is from Allah. If I am performing a lifesaving procedure, I am the source, but the final life is ordained from Allah.
That is the best I can offer you.
I don’t regret it.
In fact, I just spoke to my wife the other day and said, if someone told me you can get Quran in your brain in exchange for this medical degree, I would not hesitate an instant. I would give everything I have in my life to memorise the glorious word of Allah.
Who knows how wrong or right I am? But that's the path I have chosen and will choose for the rest of my life.
PakPassion: Can Pakistan win the World Cup?
Dr_Bassim: I think when you ask such a question, you have to be clear in what the implication is? Can Afghanistan win the World Cup? Can Bangladesh win the World Cup? Yes. But the odds of winning are much less than the established teams, simply because they don’t have the right players and a team that’s good enough to go all the way and not enough experience to win the whole thing.
So, can Pakistan can win the World Cup? Yes. Will Pakistan win the World Cup? Seems unlikely because of many factors.
PakPassion: Are you a doctor by choice or by parental pressure? And what is your field of specialisation?
Dr_Bassim: I am a doctor by choice and parents’ wishes. I’ll share an anecdote.
Ever since I was young, I used to read a lot and loved reading everything. Believe me, I was 7 when I used to read my sister’s Pakistan Studies book and then when I finished everything, I took a strange liking to reading Encyclopaedias. My parents were fascinated and asked if I understood anything, but I told them No. They asked me why I read it, and I replied, “Because one day I will.”
Since that day I have devoured all sorts of books, fiction or non-fiction, medical, geography, physics, chemistry anything that I could lay my hand on. Seeing my interest in reading, my parents suggested being a doctor. I had heard that being a doctor was a highly challenging field and naturally my curiosity was aroused.
I have no regrets going into this field and being a clinical medicine specialist, I cherish my job with great degree of enthusiasm. I love to teach medicine, and one day aspire to help medical students reach high levels of success by opening my own medical school.
PakPassion: What do you think about the future of Pakistani cricket? Do you think we will ever rule the roost, or will we always remain at the level of mediocrity we are experiencing these days?
Dr_Bassim: What a strange question! Nothing remains the same. After every darkness there is light, after every night there is day. Look at the progress of the universe. Nothing remains constant. So why would you believe that we would be mediocre all the time?
If you ask, will we ever be as good as Australia of yesteryear, that is a more difficult answer because you need 5 or 6 world-class players to rule the world and they were lucky to have those at the same time and it would be incredibly difficult for ANYONE to replicate.
But if we want to punch above our weight, you ONLY really need 1 world-class batsmen interspersed with above average batsmen and 2 world-class bowlers. And Pakistan is not far off from them.
PakPassion: How has your marriage impacted your life?
Dr_Bassim: Marriage is brilliant. Before you are only answerable to yourself and you are a fool. With marriage, you are answerable to someone else and you are no longer a fool.
Your personal growth and your mental growth is when you decide to share your life with someone no matter what the conditions and what the situation. It is sometimes a compromise and sometimes it feels you are living the dream.
But no matter what happens, the promise of living with someone is the best feeling in the world and it brings out the best in you.
PakPassion: Why have you supported Misbah-ul-Haq? Do you think he could still play?
Dr_Bassim: I supported Misbah because despite his limitations he carried his limited team with respect and honour. The performances did not suffer because of him, but because we were going through a lean phase in batting at that time.
Misbah was no visionary, that was his major limitation. He rarely tinkered with set combinations and wanted everyone to avoid defeat first and then go for the win.
Not everyone can be happy, but the way he stayed away from controversies during his tenure and we rarely heard a blip during his team, speaks for his man management skills.
So, can he still play? No.
Just like a 75-year-old surgeon probably could get away with performing lifesaving surgery, it doesn’t’ mean he should be handling the knife, similarly just because Misbah could probably get away by slotting in the team instead of Malik, doesn’t mean he should enter the team.
PakPassion: You were recently quite anti-Indian during the recent Pakistan-India war situation, are you always like that or did the whole atmosphere made you that way?
Dr_Bassim: What do you want me to say? I should support India while they enter our country looking for terrorists oblivious to the international boundaries and norms? They have been rightly humiliated.
PakPassion: Umar Akmal – a flawed genius or a waste of time?
Dr_Bassim: Waste of time. Listen, I am not saying he cannot turn over a new leaf. But he has been given countless chances at every place conceivable and the number of excuses you throw out for him, would even make Afridi smile.
Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses and accept that you made a wrong investment.
We are still hell-bent on trying to squeeze the remaining juice out an orange after it has been squeezed 50 times. At some point, we have to realise the juice just isn’t there.
PakPassion: How did you become a Pakistan cricket fan?
Dr_Bassim: I was a cricket fan since I was born, I think. I remember Pakistan winning the 92 World Cup when I was barely a little boy and that image travelled with me forever.
But after the ‘96 debacle, I kind of lost interest and became more of a realistic person.
Since ‘99, I have always criticised and castigated the team, not because I hate them, but because it has always gone from bad to worse.
So if you feel I am tough on the players, I have seen 20 years of random performances and it makes you want to laugh most of the times.
PakPassion: Looking back at all the great knocks of the years, what is the most stand out Pakistani and non-Pakistani knock you have seen?
Dr_Bassim: In terms of Pakistani one, I would say Saeed Anwar’s 194. Beyond the years when it was thought that such knocks were a regular occurrence and he did it when cricket was much different. Shahid Afridi’s Kanpur knock also comes to mind.
As for a non-Pakistani innings of greatness, I haven’t really rated much in my opinion, but any World Cup defining knock is good so I would take Gilchrist in the World Cup finals.
PakPassion: Out of Sarfaraz Ahmed, Mickey Arthur and Inzamam-ul-Haq, who deserves most of the blame for Pakistan's failures of late?
Dr_Bassim: I have thought about this question a lot.
It's hard to find who deserves the most blame. Let’s start from the CT ‘17 win when everything was perfect, Sarfaraz was the ideal captain, Mickey the ideal coach, and Inzi the perfect selector.
In comes the New Zealand tour, and things went wrong suddenly. Was it Sarfaraz’s fault for losing 5-0? Would be harsh to label it as such. Mickey? Highly unlikely. Inzi, even less so. One series 5-0 loss probably the team played below standards.
But continuous below standard performance is bound to get noticed and it’s been 2 years since we are struggling in ODIs because of poor batting and bowling.
I think Sarfaraz is a great T20 captain, an adequate ODI captain and a poor Test Captain.
Mickey is irrelevant in T20 as a coach, a below average ODI coach, and a poor Test coach.
Inzi is irrelevant in T20 as a selector, poor ODI selector, and a poor Test selector.
Looking at the above scenario, I would blame Inzi for not giving the right players the most, in 2nd position would be Mickey for not realizing he is not good enough and last of all Sarfaraz because if he is given a better team, he might create some problems for the opposition, but if you give an adequate captain an average team, he will not create anything out of it, as we have seen in the last 2 years.
That’s not to say Sarfaraz doesn’t have his faults. He has many. But that’s another thread altogether.
PakPassion: Pakistan differs from all other major cricket nations in having a more devout population which accepts religious instruction unquestioningly. But far beyond that, what people in Australia or New Zealand or England or South Africa value as the positive attribute of critical analysis in Pakistan is condemned as blasphemy. Has this lack of critical analysis affected the development of modern Pakistani cricketers?
Dr_Bassim: This is based on the social stigma we have created in Pakistan.
Interesting that while you talk about religion, while this is more related to the cultural inhibitions of Pakistan.
Since we are born, we have been inculcated to NOT accept our mistake as a cultural norm, because the people who DO accept that they are at fault, our society runs over them and blames them for everything.
This creates a natural resistance in ourselves to introspect and accept our faults or do any critical analysis as the society will not respect individuals who impart themselves the blame.
Imagine Imran Khan saying it’s my fault that this project failed. The hue and cry would be so high, that he would be immediately asked to resign. Imagine Nawaz Sharif saying that upon critical analysis and introspection I find, that I have indeed not done justice to my abilities as Prime Minister. Do you think they will be forgiven?
In such a stale environment where accepting shortcomings and doing critical analysis is looked down upon, and cheating and being oblivious to faults is rewarded with high positions, it’s not surprise the “Professor“ even managed to give sound advice by saying “Nothing wrong with my technique”.
PakPassion: You had strict atheistic views and then over time you found your path back to Islam. Can you describe what inspired you back to religion?
Dr_Bassim: I decided to answer this question last, because it makes sense.
I was never completely an atheist, but I was just a liberal Muslim, if such a term exists.
I was more of a believer in science and less of a believer in miracles and God and all the Testaments.
Listen, I was the guy who used to go to the bathroom with music crashing in the bathroom. But Alhamdulillah lots of things have changed.
My wife and my beautiful daughter are also responsible for making this change, because when they came into my life, my life changed drastically, and I could no longer pretend to live the bachelor life of clubs, dancing and music.
I realised that all my life I have wasted my time on attaining wealth, on attaining the latest cars, on becoming richer and richer but it’s pointless. What is the point of anything? Did Allah SWT create this world in vain? I became more and more perturbed by these questions and I underwent a depressive/cyclothymic phase where nothing seemed to interest me anymore.
At some point then it clicked. I don’t know how it happened, but it just did.
I realised all my medical degrees, all my life things, the billion dollars if I ever get, the Porsche that I am looking to buy are all material things. They will all end. Very soon. Nothing will stay except the concept of Permanence which in Islam is the concept of Jannah. And I decided I will follow my true religion because there is more peace in it.
I don’t regret any moment since I’ve made that decision. Stopped listening to music and instead I started listening to Quran. The more I listened to Al Mishary, the closer I touched spirituality.
I have realised that I have got all qualifications, but I never bothered memorising the Book of Allah/God. I have decided to devote my energies to this. Its late, but better late than never.
I get criticised for it a lot, though. How you, a man of science, a Doctor of Medicine, can actually believe in God, Allah and miraculous happenings. How can someone giving antibiotics for an infection, believe in the power of Healing through God? This is the question that most of the doubters or atheists put forward to me.
The only answer is I don’t know. If I am giving antibiotics, I believe that they are the source of healing and recovery and final healing is from Allah. If I am performing a lifesaving procedure, I am the source, but the final life is ordained from Allah.
That is the best I can offer you.
I don’t regret it.
In fact, I just spoke to my wife the other day and said, if someone told me you can get Quran in your brain in exchange for this medical degree, I would not hesitate an instant. I would give everything I have in my life to memorise the glorious word of Allah.
Who knows how wrong or right I am? But that's the path I have chosen and will choose for the rest of my life.
