It's the journey, right? That's what matters, right? Because if it's about anything else, like reaching targets and goals, then nobody sent that email to Pakistan. For ages now, every year of theirs has felt like a pretzel inside a roundabout on Groundhog Day: winding here, winding there, tacking right sharply, u-turning, screeching to a halt, speeding up again. Then ending up where you began. Or is that just the career of Misbah-ul-Haq as played out in the head of Shahid Afridi?
For is it not these two who, evermore, have come to represent, well, something of Pakistan cricket in this modern age? What that something is I don't know, nor do I know how it could even be possible for two such contrasting men to represent one entity, but again this year, Pakistan lived a whole year as Afridi and a whole year as Misbah.
Like Misbah, they were so good in Tests in the UAE that at times it felt like this was the Pakistan of the '80s and '90s, and that Dubai and Abu Dhabi were as impregnable as Karachi, and Sharjah as unbreachable as Sharjah again.
Through all their finest moments stood Misbah; the unbeaten 68 in that scampering Sharjah chase (and almost as memorable, the moustache-twirling ode to Dav Whatmore); the twin hundreds against Australia and the series win this winter. By the end what was more difficult to believe? That Misbah was Pakistan's most successful Test captain of all? Or that he had equalled Viv Richards for the fastest Test hundred of all time?
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