People do not give of their best nowadays. A part of what Babar Azam said, before leaving Pakistan for India for the World Cup, about Pakistan being alive to the need to do well in all matches rather than only the one against India ~ was smart enough for the departure message to go over well.

But there might have been those who recalled Pakistan’s recent Asia Cup fade-out, after which selector Inzamam-ul-Haq skipped a review meeting where uncomfortable questions came to be asked.

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There was something missing there too and it might have been good old spunk.

Shoaib Akhtar, on his own YouTube channel called it “fight,” regretting the absence of it from the Pakistani performance in Sri Lanka.

He appeared to be in great distress as he spoke. But Azam was not the only one in his team capable of the clever repartee.

Haris Rauf, asked back home why contemporary Pakistani bowlers could not summon the spite and aggression of their predecessors when up against India, said that they played cricket and did not go to war with them.

That might have been bright and sparkling but there was a time when each Pakistani player in the sub-continental showdown thought it was war minus the shooting. Perhaps the change in the new emotional response to a game both sides once feared losing had something to do with the steamrolling Pakistan suffered in Sri Lanka at the hands of India. If you saw ennui in them in history’s shadows, so did a million others. Nor would Imran Khan or Javed Miandad have said it.

If you recalled a wound-licking, retaliatory Pakistan pawing at the turf preparatory to swooping down on the prey in unrestrained fury, that was a little too long ago, the interregnum marked by history’s hammer-blows. The neighbours were official-level friends only until India required Pakistan to stick with them; terrorism drove international cricket out of the perpetually trouble-tormented land of the pure, multi-faceted corruption had started wreaking havoc and as the game prospered in one country, with Twenty20’s progress, it suffered in the other. Azam and Shahin Shah Afridi underscore how talented Pakistan still are but they know that the World Cup will take some winning.

Now that Pakistan are here, they will compel attention for obvious reasons, with the tournament revolving around them, given that beating them is what India will relish most. But Pakistan, even if at their current best, will not exactly equal their past, let alone surpass their previous high points. It is going to be a World Cup without the West Indies, which is sad, and if Pakistan repeat their effete Asia Cup showing, it will be a major disappointment, with cricket coming to be accused of failing to give of its best.