IK's Cornered Tigers Conquered the World

 

Pakistan has only won the world cup once and it was under the captaincy of its current Prime minister Imran khan. There were many turn of events and out of know where the “unpredictable” team  won the tournament with many ups and downs throughout the world cup. It was during the month of Ramzan and was Pakistan cricket’s most triumphant moment in history. Let’s take a nostalgic trip down the memory lane and look at how Pakistan progressed.

The Cricket World Cup 1992 was the first to have coloured kits, day/night games and new white balls at each bowlers’ end. The Pakistani team was struggling with injuries going into the competition. Paceman Waqar Younis was out due to back injury, Imran Khan sustained a shoulder injury limiting his bowling capacity, Javed Miandad had back problems.

Captain Imran Khan had remarked that the team was at the rock bottom of their morale. It had taken fortuitous drops of rain to restore life to a withering World Cup campaign, forcing abandonment of a crucial match after they had been bowled out for 74 in the group match against England. With that vital point, and peaking in the last bit of the round robin league, they somehow managed to scrape through to the knockout stage, even though the team lost its 4 matches out of the first five.

In the knockout stage Pakistan appeared to be a much dangerous team. Players were full of confidence and captain was eyeing for the World cup with his high aims. In the semi finals which was played against New Zealand, New Zealand batting first scored 262 runs which was considered a very reasonable score at that time. But the brilliance of 22 year old Inzamam ul Haq out played them completely with his strong, clean strokes played with impeccable timing he blasted 60 off 37 balls (7 fours, 1 six). Pakistan cruised into the finals.

Now Pakistan faced the same English side again to play for the crown of the cricketing world in front of an 87,000 strong crowd at MCG.

Pakistan won the toss and an iconic moment was when the captain of Pakistan IK came to the ground wearing a shirt on which picture of tiger was printed. He told that he wanted his team to play with high spirits and like cornered Tigers.

As the match progressed, Inzimam having announced his arrival in the semi-final, played another blinder of an innings, scoring 42 from 35 balls and Wasim Akram, using the long handle to good effect, plundered 33 off 18. The last 6 overs yielded 52, and Pakistan set a perfect round figure target of 250. England struggled from the start but then gradually built its innings. But magical balling of Wasim Akram out played the England team and completely dominated the batters. Last wicket was of Richard Illingworth who was caught by Ramiz off Imran’s bowling to secure the first world cup for Pakistan, winning by a margin of 22 runs. England were all out for 227. Wasim Akram won man of the match and was the leading wicket taker of the tournament. Javed Miandad was the 2^nd highest run scorer of the competition, with 437. History had been made by Pakistan’s greatest ever team. This opened up Pakistan’s ‘golden’ era of cricket.

The festivities were somewhat marred for the team when the captain chose to talk about his obsession about building a dream cancer hospital during his victory speech and then the reception the team got when they arrived home more than made up for it.