Pakistan's Mohammad Hafeez Overcomes Distractions to Deflate New Zealand
Batsmen in form don't like being disturbed. Not for anything.
They're like musicians mid-song in a studio crafting out the core of a future hit, or London tube commuters with a peak-hour seat, headphones in and face deep in an engrossing novel.
In fact, that might be selling it short. Batsmen in form are like this—Mark Zuckerberg's programmers as portrayed in The Social Network, hypnotically coding the framework of Facebook.
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So intense is their desire to remain undisturbed, they should carry their own hotel door hangers.
As such, you could have excused Pakistan's Mohammad Hafeez for becoming a man of white-hot fury last week. Nursing a hamstring injury and forced to fly from the UAE to England for testing on his bowling action at Loughborough University, the 34-year-old was ruled out of the second Test against New Zealand in Dubai straight after scores of 96 and 101 in the opening match of the series in Abu Dhabi.
It was the second time in recent months Hafeez's action has been called into question, after he was reported during his involvement in the Champions League Twenty20 with the Lahore Lions.
But had you offered the veteran the chance to continue on uninterrupted in the series with both a dodgy hamstring and the provision that he didn't bowl in the second and third Tests—"I never considered myself an off-spinner. I am a batsman and honestly I never even rated myself as a bowler," he said last week, per ESPN Cricinfo—he would have bitten your hand off.
Batsmen don't care. They will do anything to prolong rich form.
Hafeez, therefore, deserves considerable credit for overcoming significant distractions to push Pakistan into another position of dominance against New Zealand on Wednesday with his fine and unbeaten 178 on Day 1 of the third Test at Sharjah.
After Misbah-ul-Haq had won the toss and elected to bat on a typically warm UAE day, Hafeez, only two days removed from testing 3,500 miles away in England, overcame the instability of yet another Pakistan opening pair—Shan Masood is currently covering for the absence of the injured Ahmed Shehzad—to utterly deflate a New Zealand side hoping for a series-levelling victory.
Starting his innings with a boundary from the opening delivery, the right-hander was fluent right the way through despite the laboured performances from his team-mates on a flat batting surface.
A feature of Hafeez's innings was his early work on the back foot when facing the Kiwi new-ball pairing of Trent Boult and Tim Southee.
It was a crunching cut off the left-armer in the fifth over that saw the Pakistani quickly set the tone, following that strike with a late cut off Southee and a sumptuous pair of boundaries off Boult comprised of a smooth back-foot drive and a blistering pull shot.
And after he was done with the seamers, it was the turn of the spinners for some treatment.
The returning Daniel Vettori was greeted with a six blasted over mix-wicket.
The still-developing Ish Sodhi was sent deep into the stands over long-on.
The battling Mark Craig got the same but over long-off.
By day's end, Hafeez had crunched 178 of his team's 281 runs and had struck 26 of Pakistan's 38 boundaries.
It was as if he hadn't been disturbed since Abu Dhabi at all.
Such form, of course, has been rare for Hafeez—if he was incensed at missing the second Test, you couldn't have blamed him.
More than a decade after his debut in 2003, the right-hander is still only playing his 40th Test in a career defined more for its intermittent nature than any sort of excellence.
His maiden series against Bangladesh was followed by a three-year absence. A second stint starting in 2006 lasted only a year before another equally long layoff.
And while he's been a consistent fixture in the side since 2011, his exclusion from the recent tour of Sri Lanka was the latest of many setbacks for the veteran.
Thus, the disturbance to that form struck in the first match of this series in Abu Dhabi would have likely left him with an overwhelming sense of exasperation. That he was able to overcome such distractions and reach back-to-back hundreds for the first time deserves much credit.
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