ABU DHABI // By their standards, Pakistan’s oscillations this year have pretty much matched up to their norm.
There have been some fine, heady highs and some miserable, plummeting lows.
They wrapped up a one-day international series win against Sri Lanka on Wednesday night in Abu Dhabi, their seventh bilateral ODI series triumph of the year: that is a record for them. By most standards that is a good haul, even if it includes wins against Scotland, Ireland and Zimbabwe.
More than any other player, Mohammad Hafeez has embodied the performance swings of the side. Last night he was the exceptional Hafeez.
His unbeaten 113 was the base through which Pakistan sauntered home to an inadequate target of 226 at the Shaikh Zayed stadium, with eight wickets and 8.5 overs to spare.
It was an impeccable innings, full of exactly the kind of flawless stroke-making that can, on occasion, make him look like such a quality batsman.
He was actually even more fluid than usual, the result no doubt of a run that has seen two hundreds already in the series. Balls came off the middle; gone were the indecisive jabs and pushes that have pockmarked his career.
He launched himself firmly into a succession of pulls and hooks early (his first 20 runs came entirely in boundaries).
When he drove he looked like he was modeling for batting textbooks. From very early, in fact, a hundred looked likely and so it eventually came.
As his third of the series, he became the first Pakistani since Zaheer Abbas to hit that many in one series.
It was also his fifth of the year, the most by a Pakistani since Mohammad Yousuf in 2002 and joint-top for 2013 with Shikhar Dhawan.
But the innings, and this series, masks the desperate struggles he has gone through the entire year, against better bowling attacks, in tougher conditions (his other two centuries have come against Ireland and Zimbabwe).
He only has to hear the name Dale Steyn to get out to him.
In fact he was so poor for a stretch he was dropped from the Test side and only his bowling kept him in the ODI side. And a permanent reminder of his fallibility is found in this fact: his ODI average crept over 30 after the third ODI of this series for the first time since May 2003.
His story has been the story of Pakistan’s year, rising, dipping but not definitively settling anywhere.
A series win, ultimately, is a series win though and against higher-ranked opposition (Sri Lanka are fourth, Pakistan sixth) it is to be lauded. Sri Lanka have not looked like a top-four team here and they were very poor last night.
On an ideal, even-paced surface, their batting conspired to get themselves out, Umar Gul an early recipient with three cheap wickets.
The only thing those top-order dismissals were missing was some nice gift wrapping and an old, fat, bearded man in red handing them out.
Kumar Sangakkara and debutante Ashan Priyanjana stabilised the situation with an 89-run stand, but Sangakkara got himself run out and Priyanjana attempted a needless paddle when a century looked inevitable.
Effectively that was the air gone from the innings.
Angelo Mathews and Kithruwan Vithanage added handy runs but against Saeed Ajmal it was never going to amount to anything substantial.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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