IT was one of the sights of the summer. Ijaz Ahmed, batting in the first innings of the first Test at Lord's, throwing himself away outside off stump and falling over his own feet so that Dominic Cork's delivery passed behind him, plucked out his middle stump and sent it bowling down the ground like a clump of tumbleweed in a spaghetti western. Ijaz looked, and probably felt, a clown.
But for 4 1/2 hours, the laugh was on him yesterday. Coming to the wicket in the fourth over of the game to face England bowlers given first use of a frisky pitch and with their early match tails up, he played like Errol Flynn in flannels, cutting and carving 20 fours and two sixes, before launching an inelegant heave at a slower ball from Cork.
As Jack Russell took the edge, Cork danced a jig of delight so extravagant that he fell over in the process. But his glee was understandable, for Ijaz had delighted a mediocre crowd of 9,000 with an innings full of scintillating, uninhibited strokeplay that appeared to have made a mockery of Mike Atherton's decision, on winning a toss for the first time in a Test this summer, to put Pakistan in to bat.
Ijaz was fourth out having hit 141 out of 232 added while he was there. England managed a slight resurgence late in the day, Cork getting rid of Ijaz's brother in law Salim Malik for a grafting 55, and Caddick, surging down the hill with the second new ball getting Wasim Akram for 7, but at 281 for six, in what promises to be a low scoring knife edge game, Pakistan can be satisfied with their lot. Moin Khan's contemptuous cover drive off the last ball of the day was the fullest of full stops.
As in 1992, three hundred promises to be a good score, 350 a winner.
If by the close, Atherton had come closer to vindication however, then for much of the day, it looked as if England might be on the wrong end of the sort of six hundred drubbing produced by Australia in 1989 on this ground when put in by David Gower. Captains, however, can be on a hiding to nothing and it is easy to leap in with knee jerk criticism before the game has been played out. There is always an unfair tendency to level more criticism at a skipper who puts a side in and watches it go wrong than one who bats first and sees his batting order annihilated.
In this instance, however, Atherton is above reproach, for having assessed the conditions - a damp pitch that had spent several days under cover, and an overcast sky with little prospect of sun - he had little option, with a four man pace attack, but to bowl first. Rather, until they regained some control late in the day, he was let down dreadfully by his bowlers who, without exception, perceived some tasty bounce, and, as a result, all pitched too short.
All four seamers were culpable although Caddick and Mullally, perhaps the tallest opening pair England have ever had, were lively at the start, and Cork regained his rhythm and common sense in the final session.
But the day belonged to Ijaz. Suggesting that his cricket life has been mercurial is like saying that Alan Shearer is a bloke in a stripy shirt who kicks a bladder about. His career has had more ins and outs than Nigel Kennedy's bowing arm. When he was just sweet 16, he became the youngest batsman ever to score a double hundred. At 18 he toured England with Imran Khan's successful 1987 side and by the time he got the key to the door, had taken the Australians for two Test centuries. Talented, or what.
Then he lost the plot and for five years he was ignored until last winter he flew to Australia as a replacement, got his nut down for a monumental century blockathon in Sydney, followed with another hundred in Christchurch and suddenly he was part of the scene again. After he had found a semblance of form with 76 in the second innings at Lord's he provided some wonderful entertainment yesterday.
