CHAMPION Pakistan's World Cup of misery was full to the brim, ``Pensioners' Paradise Lost'' it was as Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium (on March 9, 1996) was witness to Azhar's India winning that key quarter-final deadlock by 39 runs. Vitally, Pakistan was without Wasim Akram in that game that is still the high point of controversy. Now Pakistan, under Wasim Akram, looks a different team altogether.

Pakistan won the World Cup in 1992 under the generalship of Imran Khan because it peaked at the right time - given a friendly Prime Sports nudge by Sunil Gavaskar. And now Pakistan, in 1999, could have peaked a little too early under Wasim Akram. In this context, the team's ``underperformance'' against Sri Lanka could not have been more timely. Only by so holding something in reserve can Wasim Akram's Pakistan hope to have a second peaking in the 1999 World Cup. But even such a second peaking can come, remember, only if there is no ``judicial intervention.'' Nowhere can the law take its own inexorable course as in Pakistan. Do not therefore be too surprised if that judicial inquiry, in the nick of time, takes away with the right hand what Wasim Akram has given Pakistan with his left.

Vis-a-vis the team from across the Wagah bus border, can India summon the drive for yet another humdinger encounter? Azhar and his men have to recapture the Bangalore 1996 ``body language'' here, since there is a special flavour still to Sharjah. Remember, the Gulf Indian feels diminished each time our men show themselves to be minnows in the ``final'' face-off with Pakistan.

The sixes unleashed by the ultra-sharp blade of Sachin Tendulkar (in April 1998) certainly went some way towards playing down our Sharjah hang-up. But thereby hangs the tale that sixes struck even by a Sachin, at Sharjah, go thus far and no further when the adversary hard hit is only Steve Waugh's Australia! It is that full-tossed last-ball six by Javed Miandad that continues to make the Gulf Indian feel as small as Chetan Sharma. Not until Tendulkar pays back Javed Miandad in his own Sharjah coin can that last-ball-six score be neutralised in Indian ex-pat eyes. In the eyes of viewers all over India, no less.

In sum, Sharjah can crystallise as ``The Playground of The East'' for Tendulkar only as and when there is, on his part, an April 1998- style encore - against Pakistan by way of a ``final'' settlement. That Javed Miandad is no ``slow coach'' here is crystal clear by now. Erased - by the way Javed has got Wasim Akram and his men to perform lately - is the memory of Miandad's bat, ironically, having been blunt-instrumental in knocking Pakistan out of the last World Cup. Azhar's India performed like a team possessed to win that quarter-final trial of subcontinental strength at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore, just over three years ago. India's winning that needle match by 39 runs is something that pricks Pakistan to this day. Seeing how it was Javed's listless willow that held up his team's assault on India's 287 for 8, Miandad had reason to feel the pinch - all the more so as there was, to underpin the occasion, that banner newspaper headline proclaiming: Pak'ed them off!

In fact, from that telegenic moment in which umpire Steve Bucknor put Javed literally in his place (within the 15-yard circle at point), the fire was knocked out of Miandad. You did, to start with, glimpse some of the old Miandad brashness as he fielded. But as he proceeded to misfield rather than field, time and again, even this show of Javed aggro lost its edge. With the bat after that, Miandad, it was charisma-fadingly noted, could barely defend his wicket, leave alone hit India for six. Surely, you said to yourself, this was not Javed, it was someone else masquer ading as Miandad!

And Javed's looking a shadow-boxer of his old self soon became the burden of the Imran Khan song. Yes, Imran had loftily perched himself in the Chinnaswamy Stadium telecommentary box by then. And as Imran, in his ``gunning commentary,'' identified the metamorphosed persona of Miandad (38) as the root cause of Pakistan's beginning to lose its 1992 World Cup champion moorings, Javed finally knew that the game was up. The strokeless wonder he looked, in the 1996 World Cup, meant that Pakistan could, in fine, reach but 248 for 9 (from 49 overs) by way of a rejoinder to India's 287 for 8 (from 50 overs). Miandad, four years earlier, had led the way in pillorying Imran Khan for turning Pakistan's sensational March 25 Melbourne moment (the 1992 World Cup win) into his private cancer hospital show. Now Imran Khan, all savoir-faire, got his own back as he tellingly telecast Miandad in the mould of a World Cup spoilsport.

If ``Bangalore '96'' was thus the end of ``The World'' for Pakistan, the Sharjah image of Javed Miandad is still intact as the man traditionally out there to street-corner bully India. And Miandad now is all set to pose a ``coachload'' of problems for Azhar and co. Yes, the Sharjah syndrome grips India from the moment its players land at the aerodrome. Dilip Vengsarkar's experience will never let us forget.

But is this not the same Sharjah where the wanton bat of Tendulkar proved all-conquering last April, Steve Waugh's Australia seeing Sachin's appetite for runs frighteningly whetted as he cut Kangaroo after Kangaroo to size? ``Easy meat, these Kangaroos!'' was the dismissive attitude of Tenkulkar as he waded into Warne like no one, just no one, before had done in the case of Our Man Shane.

I dwelt on the Sachinised Sharjah scenario, in some detail, around this time last year. Yet the Gulf scene of the time is such that it is worth recreating here. In the `First of the Mohicans' (Sports Special, March 20), I drew pointed attention to how Richard Hadlee had refused to share (with his New Zealand teammates) the value of the snazzy car this swinger won upon reaching his 300th Test-wicket milestone. In the case of Tendulkar, by contrast, there was no call to break up, spare parts-wise, that opulent Opel Sachin made his own at Sharjah. For the caring-sharing principle laid down, 30 years ago, by Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Ajit Wadekar (as captain and vice-captain) still holds in the Indian team. This norm is that only prizes won in cash, not kind, are to be split among the team members. There has been but one little amendment here since 1969. Where, in the Pataudi-Wadekar era, the cash was equally shared among the 15-16 members of the Indian team, now the man winning keeps to himself 25 per cent of the prize money. The remaining 75 per cent is then equitably distributed among those forming part of the Indian contingent (including the coach and the physio).

It has been that way, in fact, for some years now - ever since we lived into the razzle-dazzle times in which the prize money got to be divided in the Indian team in a spirit of: ``Keep the change!'' We are thus in the midst of an age in which there is no question of our captain, Mohammed Azharuddin, envying Sachin for the Opel he won. Azhar lets that sleek limousine purr past - as one who knows that fast cars are easier to drive than fast bowling!

For all that, the 20,000 pound sterling that Sachin Tendulkar `Coca-Colanded' in Sharjah (to the Adelaide-back delight of Sir Donald Bradman) became the subject-matter of a lively `sharing' debate in India. But since that 20,000 pounds was not part of the prize money advertised before the start of the 1998 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, finders were keepers! And wasn't Sachin here a `Bradmanly' find without peer?

Once again, I give the details to refresh reader memory. It was in the misty moment that Tendulkar took Azhar's India past that 236 runs Rubicon (to be crossed against Steve Waugh's Australia) that Coca-Cola got Tony Greig, on captive TV, to announce a spot award of 20,000 pounds to the littlest of Little Masters. As Sachin blazed his way, in the oil kingdom, to 143 off 131 balls, the big-built guy sitting next to me (in front of the small screen) did some quick sums in his head. The exchange rate right then, he knowingly noted, was Rs. 66.97 to the pound. Thus Tendulkar's 143, he deduced, was worth a little nest-egg of Rs. 13,39,400 to the Brown Blaster. Each run of that never-never 143 came, consequently, to rate as Rs. 9366.44 in the case of `Ten'! The daredevil 134 with which Sachin magic-digitally followed up that 143 (vs the same Australia, this time in the Coca-Cola Cup final) saw India win Sharjah and the world.

But not Pakistan! And it is a cup-final win over Pakistan that the Gulf Indian urgently seeks to savour - to be able to continue to hold high his head - lifted, lingeringly still, in the direction of the Sachin six soaring into the Sharjah sky. That April 24, 1998, six-wicket win over Australia was but an aperitif. It left the India-Pakistan Sharjah `gulf' still to be bridged.

Not that Tendulkar's striking bat-oil - in the wistful way he `progressed' from 143 to 134 - did not make the Gulf Indian feel fulfilled; it did. But between Coca-Cola Cup and lip there still is that `final' mental blockade represented by Pakistan! On the Test-match front, after Chepauk and Kotla, Eden Gardens was (for India and Pakistan alike) the `decider' in which the third Sri Lankan eye of Kandaiah Francis saw us come off second-best as Tendulkar (9) failed to `see red' in time enough to beat the Arshad Khan arrow-throw, before which we viewers saw Shoaib Akhtar bow and how! On the one-day triangular front, back to `rectangle one' we were at Jaipur against Pakistan - sans Sachin. The `Pepsiries' confrontation between India and Pakistan, therefore, merely prepares the ground at Sharjah for the big pay- off.

There is a familiar `ear-ring' about the way Henry Blofeld used to jazz up the India-Pakistan contest at Sharjah. Henry (hatted, suited and booted) came finally to be upstaged, even at Sharjah, by Tony Greig. The British-colonel touch in Henry Blofeld's presentation lay in the fact that the watcher visibly felt entertained, if not always enlightened. The ringside seat we now have at Sharjah, via Tony Greig, is so different from the ear- ringside seat conjured by Henry Blofeld - an ear-ringside seat that saw ladies from India and Pakistan alike decked at their best. We do also miss, at Sharjah, the piquant presence of telecommentator Iftikhar, who had this rare gift of being able to spot-identify Pakistan film stars (ranging from Shehnaaz to Mehnaaz) even while being update enough to tell Sridevi apart from Hema Malini.

Varily a `Doordarshan' mela was Sharjah in Ifti's heyday. The setting changed dramatically only as Anjali brought along the top-heavy bat of little Sachin to sandstorm the Gulf in a mind- blowing manner that had Shane Warne reaching the point of no return - none for plenty. And there is plenty more, hopefully, to come from Sachin's bat, if it goes to Sharjah again. No backslide is permissible now, not when Brian Lara could weigh a double ton all over again. Trust `Ten', therefore, to be right there through the World Cup, Lara's `left' acting as just the punch Sachin needs to get it all `back'!

Raju Bharatan

Source: The Hindu