The full text of the interview:
I always had a passion for cricket and in my mind, cricket was always the first choice as a profession. I was also into other sports such as hockey, football, table-tennis, badminton and squash throughout my school and college days, but a career in cricket was the thing that I really wanted. My parents were teachers and therefore education was important to us as a family. They always wanted me to have a good education to fall back upon, rather than just have cricket as my only choice and then nothing else if things didn’t work out in my cricket career. Up until my post-graduation, I had to balance education and cricket, but once I completed my studies it was time to make a decision about my choice of profession and I didn’t have much hesitation in choosing cricket.
The 2007 Twenty20 World Cup final against India in Johannesburg was a huge occasion in terms of the development of cricket and the twenty-over format and missing out on victory when I got so close to taking the team to victory hurt a lot. Maybe I could have done things differently, maybe I could have played a different shot, but at that time I thought that was my best shot and the shot I was confident in playing and the shot that I thought could take us toward the target. But, once something is gone, it’s not good to live in the past and keep on thinking about what ifs. You can have many regrets, you can have afterthoughts, but it’s better to move on and that’s what I did in my life.
I was always a student of the game, someone who liked to look beyond the basics of cricket and I was somebody who thought about the game very deeply. Right from a young age, I enjoyed watching as much cricket as I could, watching what players were doing, their mindset, their preparation and took great pleasure in analysing every detail and aspect of the game. This wasn’t just about watching the great players that I played with or against, it was about learning from domestic team-mates, and the guys who you play club cricket with and the people who don’t always make it to the highest level of the profession. I found that I could sometimes learn more from the guys who didn’t play at the highest level than the players who were playing at the top level. This continued right throughout my playing career as I was always someone who believed that learning in life and in cricket never stops. This really helped me when I became captain of my country and has also helped me since I became a coach.
Honestly speaking, I never thought I would captain Pakistan or become the Head Coach one day. Once I was playing cricket my whole focus was on the sheer enjoyment of playing the game, living with an immense passion for cricket, and ensuring that I performed as a player. But looking back now, whatever came to me was a part of my cricketing journey. There were no plans from my side to captain Pakistan one day or a craving to lead the national team. You dream about leading your country and you want to be at the top of your profession, but I never even thought that I would be captain or Head Coach of Pakistan during my career. The captaincy opportunity literally just came out of the blue and I took it with both hands.
I had been dropped from the Pakistan Test side and then to suddenly be asked to captain the team in 2010 was tough. My performances had dipped, I was out of form, I had gone through a rough patch in my career and I was going through a lot of self-assessment at that time in my life. I was under a lot of mental pressure and at that time I knew I had to come back strongly and prove my doubters wrong. I knew that I had to work doubly hard, and the most important thing was that I made a strong comeback, performed well and worked harder. It was the turning point in my cricket career and once I was appointed skipper, cricket gave me a lot of success in my career.
After the spot-fixing saga, Pakistan cricket needed a lift and some stability. I was blessed and I am really happy that whatever challenges were thrown my way as a captain and my team’s way, we met them head-on. At a pivotal moment in Pakistan cricket and a critical period, we won back our fans, we gained respect, we got our dignity back as a cricket nation, we won over the people that we had lost during that dark time for Pakistan cricket, we were back in the hearts of cricket-lovers, we won back the glory for Pakistan cricket and that was really satisfying. It was a great and very important turnaround. We performed well as a team, but whilst I received a lot of praise for leading the team and the group and representing Pakistan cricket in that era, there were many stars in various formats like Saeed Ajmal, Abdul Rehman, Younis Khan, Umar Gul, Mohammad Hafeez, Asad Shafiq, Azhar Ali, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Shahid Afridi, Junaid Khan and Ahmed Shehzad who performed really well and 5 or 6 years later some of the aforementioned players took us to the position of the number-one ranked Test side. I was lucky to be captain of that group during that period, but it wasn’t just about me, it was about much bigger things, the whole team, the whole group and the future of Pakistan cricket.
It’s always easy to criticise from outside as you see things differently and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But I knew the conditions out there in Mohali during that 2011 World Cup semi-final against India. That surface was a difficult pitch once the ball got older. Even during the Indian innings, they made a flying start and then when the ball got older there was reverse-swing, spin, the ball was stopping and it was difficult for batting. People criticised me for not rotating the strike, scoring quicker than I did, but they failed to understand that even a batsman of Sachin Tendulkar’s class struggled on that surface and found it difficult to score runs that day. We made a good start but after 15 overs it became more and more difficult to score runs. Having said that, I could have done better, as a team we could have done better. As a batsman it was my job to win the game for Pakistan and I didn’t do that and neither did any of my team-mates. I was really disappointed, the fans were disappointed, but having said that we can’t do much about it now.
Being the skipper who has the most Test victories for Pakistan and the captain when we were the number-one ranked Test side were great achievements and something I will cherish for all of my life. It was an honour to be a part of those achievements and accomplishments. To be presented with the Test mace only a few years after the events which dragged Pakistan cricket down was almost miraculous and a huge turnaround. It’s always nice to remember the great moments of your career and those times which brought smiles to the faces of our fans and the nation. Whilst I received praise for my role in those achievements, there was a lot of hard work put in by a lot of people on and off the pitch and they too deserve a lot of credit.
I came up against some tough opponents throughout my career. Sometimes your form didn’t help, sometimes conditions made things tougher than they should have been. But the toughest group of bowlers that I came up against was the Australian quartet of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee and Shane Warne. They had everything that a captain could want from his bowlers, they made it so tough to score runs against them and you had to work hard and earn every run scored. There were no freebies or easy runs and even in our own conditions it was really tough to face them. As well as that great Australian quartet, Dale Steyn, James Anderson and Stuart Broad were very difficult opponents and masters of their trade. On the other hand, I was relieved that I didn’t have to face Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar as an opponent, as facing them in practice was tough enough.
One match that stands out for me is the Lord’s Test match of 2016. Scoring a century in my first appearance at the home of cricket, and at the same place where Pakistan cricket was shamed in 2010 felt really good. For the Pakistan team, coming back to Lord’s, doing so well after what happened there previously and to win the Test match was just something that was simply incredible and will always be dear to my heart. They were special days, and a time and ground that will always remain dear to me and to Pakistan cricket.
Another match that will always be special to me will be mine and Younis Khan’s last ever match for Pakistan when we won a Test series for the first time in the Caribbean. That match was incredible and the way it ended was just amazing. It seemed that we were destined to end our careers with a draw but then the dramatic twist came from Yasir Shah and we won the match. The guard of honour, the victory celebrations, the sheer joy and ending my career at the same time as Younis Khan with a historic win, they were wonderful moments.
I always wanted to not just score a solitary One-day hundred, but lots of them. Looking at the numbers, I think I’d rather take them as they are, by holding the record for the most One-day runs without making a hundred, rather than just having scored a single One-day century. In a strange way I’d rather hold this unique record than just a single century. Ideally, I would have liked to have made 11 or 12 centuries in the 50-over format but it wasn’t to be. I came close a few times and I should have done it, but it was just one of those things that wasn’t written in my destiny.
I more often than not went into bat with the team in trouble in Test cricket. But that pressure got the best out of me and I seemed to thrive under that extreme pressure. In those situations, you have to apply yourself even more when your team is struggling than you would if your team is in a comfortable position. I think it came down to my personality and Younis Khan’s personality. Throughout my career and very much like Younis Khan, we thrived under pressure, whether that was in domestic cricket or in international cricket. The teams that we played for depended on us and we were just used to those situations. In fact, it was almost unusual for us to go into bat with the team on top or in control. Those situations helped get the best out of us and helped us perform well for Pakistan and as a batting partnership we got the best out of each other. I was lucky that I had Younis Khan as a batting partner more often than not and he always helped in those difficult situations in how to soak up the pressure and how to counter-attack. We bounced off each other as a batting duo and it was always wonderful to be out there in the middle with him.
Being the Head Coach of the Pakistan Cricket team is one of the toughest jobs out there. Let me tell you, this is much tougher than being out there playing. You can make decisions off the field as a Head Coach, but you cannot support those decisions on the field or prove that those decisions you made were right or wrong out in the middle. While you are a player you can help the team to achieve their goals, but when you are a coach, or selector or a part of the team management, you can only plan and assist in the decision-making, but once that match commences you can just sit and watch how and what the others do. And whatever happens on the field, the coach seems to be the one who gets the most criticism when things go wrong. Advice before a match, guidance before a match, telling the players something before a match is my job, but it seems it’s very easy for people to criticise the coach after what happens on the field, even when things are out of my control.
There is always space for improvement, you always feel when you look back at your playing career that I could have done that better and achieved more in the game. I could have done far better in One-day internationals by scoring hundreds, I could have converted 5 or 6 nineties into hundreds during my Test career. The team could have done better in the 2011 World Cup, that was a bitter pill to swallow, and the 2007 Twenty20 World Cup was tough to take, that could have been two more trophies. Losing the 2010 Twenty20 World Cup semi-final to Australia was a moment that was tough to take especially after scoring 191. You can always look back and think these things could have been improved upon but at the same time I look at my achievements, the respect, the honour and what cricket has given me, what Pakistan has given me, what international cricket has given me, what Pakistan cricket has given me and I am always grateful for all of this. I will also always be grateful to the fans and my team-mates as nothing would have been possible without them. I will always look back at my playing career with great pride, and will always be satisfied with whatever I achieved in the great sport of cricket.
