The master at navigating Pakistan from disaster, Hanif Mohammed simply irreplaceable

Hanif Mohammed, Pakistan's opening batsman seen during the opening match of their tour of England against the Indian Gymkhana club at Osterley, April 29, 1962. Hanif went on to score 102. Allsport HShow more

If the final Test between West Indies and India ends, as persistent rain and wet outfields are so resolutely colluding to ensure, in a draw, Pakistan will become the top-ranked Test side in the world.

Even as you read those words out the fact they convey seems somehow grossly incorrect. Pakistan have never been the best Test side in the world, not by a formal ranking system, or even an informal one.

At best, in the mid- to late-80s, they shared top billing with the West Indies. Intermittently, through the ’90s they strived, but never were they indisputably top.

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One need not hold the ICC’s current rankings system in any great regard to wonder at Pakistan’s climb. Indeed, to hold an opinion on the system is to assume some kind of understanding of how it functions and nobody really understands how and why it works the way it does.

But it does exist and it does serve a purpose, and Pakistan will be top of it in a few days, and it is impossible to not be taken by the implausibility. Unable to play Tests at home or in front of decent crowds; led by a 42 year old and, indirectly, a 38 year old; a bowling attack which even after the series against England has a combined total of well under a hundred Tests; and an XI in which only two players have more than 50 Tests.

And though there will be quibbling over this, some will argue that neither is this as gifted a generation as some of their predecessors, like the ’90s side, or some of Mushtaq Mohammed’s late ’70s sides. It does not really matter.

At the same time as lauding this rise, though, one cannot help but ask another question, prompted by the passing of one of the country's greatest during the course of the Test win that ultimately may propel Pakistan to the summit. Would Pakistan have been the best Test side in the world earlier had they managed to replicate Hanif Mohammed?

Here is the thing about the triumvirate that guided Pakistan’s cricket in its earliest years. It formed a near-perfect spine for any Test side: a quality opening batsman, a quality opening fast bowler and a strong-willed captain to deploy them both.

Two-thirds of this trio shaped Pakistani cricket indelibly forever after; Pakistan found adherents to Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s captaincy template and, of course, enough fast bowlers after Fazal Mahmood to loan them out through the subcontinent. Combined, that has sustained Pakistan.

What if they had found more Hanifs? That may sound like a discredit to several of the undoubtedly great batsmen who have come after him: Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammed Yousuf and Younis Khan, after all, form no lean tradition.

The query is not about batsmen as much as it is about invoking the spirit of Hanif’s finest feats of batsmanship though. Hanif had an expansive game, but nothing defined him like those careful, studious and almost meditative navigations of disaster – the 16-hour 337 in Bridgetown, or the 187 at Lord’s that took a whole weekend, foremost among them.

Had that particular quality – to not crumble, to stand firm – sprinkled itself on the batsmen who followed him, would it not have brought Pakistan greater durability and more consistent successes?

Tellingly, six Tests after he was forced to retire in October 1969, Pakistan folded, meekly and chaotically, in the final innings of successive Tests in Melbourne and Sydney.

It was no coincidence those occurred in the immediate aftermath of his exit, as if the foundation had been pulled from beneath the structure. It was those innings that came to form an identifiable strain in Pakistan’s batting thereafter and not Hanif’s work over the 17 years of his career.

It remains too, as was witnessed on the final day in Edgbaston this month, a panicked, nervous wreck of a negotiation of final days or small targets. Everything about how most Pakistani batsmen approach such days is almost exactly the opposite of how Hanif went about them.

He let such challenges soak him complete; the time at hand, the almost obsessive-compulsive nature of batting within such strictly defined terms of operation.

Why did it not come another Hanif? He was as much a celebrity and role model in his time as, say, Fazal. Pakistan has suffered for it, though perhaps it is a truer testament to genius when it cannot be replicated.

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