The year started Down Under with Pakistan being overpowered in all formats in Australia. The Test whitewash had come only three months after Pakistan had won the ICC Test Mace and hence retirements seemed inevitable, at least for captain Misbah-ul-Haq.
But Misbah would stay on and lead Pakistan to its first ever Test series win in the West Indies, where Younis Khan also became the first Pakistani to score 10,000 Test runs. It was the perfect farewell for the two legends, which eventually surfaced on the final ball of the penultimate over of the series as Yasir Shah now famously bowled Shannon Gabriel.
Pakistan’s only other Test series since, the 2-0 whitewash at home against Sri Lanka in September/October, only went on to underscore just how mammoth #MisYou were for the team, and how big a void remains to be fulfilled. But that Test series remained the only low for Pakistan in the year.
Hasan Ali
The events in the year prove how both the on and off field achievements were intertwined
Following Misbah’s retirement, Sarfraz Ahmed took over the leadership of the Pakistani national team in all three formats – it addition to the Quetta Gladiators and now the BengalTigers. And just the like T20s, Sarfraz has delivered in the ODIs as well.
Pakistan are currently in New Zealand on the back of a nine-match winning streak in the ODIs. The first half of this streak was punctuated with the historic Champions Trophy win, where Pakistan being quintessentially Pakistan, came from the brink to upset all odds, winning the second most prestigious ODI tournament as the lowest (8th) ranked side.
Perfect farewell for #MisYou
Pakistan’s achievement was a culmination of coming back from the opening match drubbing against India, scoring 75 runs with the final three wickets in the chase against Sri Lanka, convincingly beating much more fancied sides South Africa and England and then going on to hammer India in the final.
The most outrageous part of this achievement was the fact that Pakistan turned things around in a fortnight, going from playing an ancient brand of cricket to outdoing the very best in the world in 14 days.
The Champions Trophy win established Sarfraz as the undisputed leader of the troops and put Pakistan back as a formidable limited-overs side.
Sarfraz Ahmed with the Champions Trophy
In 2017, Pakistan also had convincing ODI and T20 series wins away to West Indies in May and then against Sri Lanka in October in the UAE.
However, parallel to the Champions Trophy win, the major turning point for Pakistan cricket was the return of world class international cricket.
In March, Lahore hosted the final of the exceedingly successful Pakistan Super League’s (PSL) second season. Not only did the PSL reaffirm itself as a household name throughout the month that it was contested, it also gave Pakistan the budding superstars that actually spearheaded the Champions Trophy win in the likes of Shadab Khan, Fakhar Zaman and Hasan Ali.
Darren Sammy dancing with Kamran Akmal and Hasan Ali in the opening ceremony of the PSL final
World XI taking a lap of Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore
And so the PSL, that helped Pakistan give the win that made it impossible for international cricket to ignore Pakistan, and whose final was played in Lahore, that became the bedrock for Pakistan’s successes in 2017 – both on and off the pitch.
This was headlined by the three-match T20 series against the World XI in September that featured some of the biggest names in the game. With Sri Lanka returning to Lahore, the site where the attack on that very side had taken international cricket away, Pakistan cricket had come full circle, paving the way for more world-class athletes to tour the country in 2018 and beyond.
This cycle of events proves how both the on- and off-field achievements were intertwined, and for which both Pakistan’s supreme athletes, and the team management, along with the Pakistan Cricket Board deserve full credit.
It is owing to the combined effort that Pakistan cricket has only headed one way in 2017: forwards.
