A tour that promised much ended in lawsuits and possible police complaints © Getty Images

One of my favourite cartoons shows two couples sitting in a living room, on couches facing each other. The female half of one is saying to her spouse, “What do you mean ‘we should get going’? We live here!” Yes, indeed, when guests overstay their welcome, things do get a little prickly.

I’m reminded of this cartoon as Pakistan’s tour of England comes to an end. I doubt whether there has been any tour in the recent history of cricket, whose downward trajectory from the giddy heights of Mount FeelGood to Acrimony Canyon has been quite so steep. Like the desperately put-upon hosts in the cartoon above, England must have wanted the tour to end, and soon, even if it meant they would be the ones leaving (possibly to Spain, and not necessarily on a budget flight, to catch the end of the holiday season in Ibiza, where Jimmy Anderson could meet up with his many new friends).

The tour began as a showcase of England’s hospitality and Pakistan’s desperately-in-need-of-a-showcase cricket. It ended with talk of lawsuits and possible police complaints, and the Pakistani and English captains, both now safely ensconced at home, speaking of the stresses and strains they underwent, during the Summer Horribilis of 2010. No good deed, the English will ruefully note, goes unpunished.

Along the way, we had accusations of match-fixing, undercover stings, epic, unhinged rants by senior administrators, calls for suspending Pakistan (Nasser Hussain and Ian Botham being at least two of the worthies that have made this suggestion) and possible brawls in nets (the similarity to cage-fighting is uncanny, don’t you think?). And that was all off the field. Cricket, a staid sport? I think not.

In the midst of these quasi-facetious ramblings, a serious note must be struck. Plenty of damage has been done to cricket. Weeks after the initial allegations of spot-fixing, we are no closer to knowing what, so to speak, went down. A bright and exciting talent like Mohammed Amir in whose praise I penned a paean in these very pages has earned the tag of “cheater.” And another cricketing country has been placed in the slot marked “Severely Dysfunctional”, rendering speculation about the future of international cricket an even more depressing exercise than before.

My hope in the past, when confronted by a depressing turn of affairs in cricket, has been to hope that a good Test match will show up and take care of everything. I still have faith in that regard, for Australia have landed on Indian shores. And despite the depressing lack of pre-match press-conference sledging from Ricky Ponting, the series promises to deliver some thrills and spills. Of course, there are only two Tests, and they will occur at times that could not possibly be worse for this East Coast resident. Still, I’ll take them and hunker down. The alternative is to read more about Pakistani outrage and English counter-outrage. And that option scarcely bears thinking about.

Umar Gul celebrates the winning wicket at Lord's © Getty Images

Those of us used to lulling ourselves to sleep with thoughts of great Pakistani cricket feats have been having a hard time lately. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, a silken Mohammad Yousuf late cut between gully and point, a Mohammad Asif in-cutter through bat and pad, or a bludgeoned pull into the stands by Shahid Afridi – or, for the nostalgic-minded, Imran Khan merely turning at the top of his bowling mark, Javed Miandad doing little more than taking guard, or Wasim Akram simply flashing a smile – would have been enough to sink even the most resistant insomniac fan into gentle stupor and a blissful night’s sleep.

As of the last three weeks, these images have not been coming as readily to mind as they once did. In their place, thoughts of misguided fast bowlers delivering suspicious no-balls and sleazy bookies counting a tableful of money have invaded the senses. Not that the betting scandal has been something particularly unusual. After all, off-the-record talk of match-fixing and spot-fixing has been going on in Pakistan cricket for a while. And as far as crises go, for the last few years Pakistan cricket has been going through one monster turn of events after another.
 
But the August 29 newsflash was spiced with enough salacious detail to take over the conversation completely. Still, any storm is expected to die down after a few days, and by now you would have thought the headlines would move on to an expectant wait, as the ICC appoints a tribunal and fact-finding begins. But a scandal-mongering British tabloid press is refusing to let go, and the sleaze and muck just keeps coming.

In Pakistan, most of us have learned that the most effective means of redirecting a cricket conversation is to play hard and play well. This lesson may have been lost on PCB chairman Ijaz Butt, who keeps talking in public as if he is holding forth with cronies in a drawing room in Lahore, but the coach-captain combination of Waqar Younis and Shahid Afridi, scarred veterans of multiple wars, knows it well.

Wounds were too fresh for any kind of fight back in the two-match Twenty20 series, but in the opening ODI in Durham the team walked out with purpose. That contest may have been lost by 24 runs, but it was clear that Pakistan had hit their stride. The next match at Headingley was stretched to the final over, but it was a 320-330 pitch and a target of 295 for a formidable English side led by an in-form Andrew Strauss was never going to be enough. Then came the victory at The Oval, one of Pakistan’s most reliable hunting grounds, and with it dreams of a victory to follow at Lord’s, and a decider at the Rose Bowl.

I’ll be honest. When the boundaries were coming thick and fast for Andrew Strauss and Steve Davies as they chased down 266 with a century opening stand last night, I had given up. Several other comrades, judging by the despondency of their text messages, had given up too. It was approaching midnight in Pakistan and a warm bed seemed far more inviting than fuming and stewing in frustration.

Then a wicket fell, and another. Sleep vanished. The ball began to reverse, boundaries dried up, and text messages began flying furiously. Eventually, Eoin Morgan stood between Pakistan and victory. Afridi had already dropped him, and this “little Irish genius” – as Osman Samiuddin described him in an urgent missive – was determined to cash in.

When Morgan top edged Shoaib Akhtar, I switched my television off. The ball rose alarmingly into the night sky, triggering a long-hidden reflex in my right thumb, which clamped down on the clicker. Even in the best of times, the idea of Pakistani fielders catching a skier is riddled with anxiety. On this occasion, it unleashed sheer panic.

After a few seconds, I turned the TV back on, but muted the sound and shielded my eyes from the screen. Holding my breath, I moved my hand just enough to allow a peek at the score line. From 211 for 7, it had changed to 211 for 8. Morgan was walking back and England were as good as gone. I realised I hadn’t indulged in these antics for many years, not since I was 15, which was thirty years ago.

That’s the deal with Pakistan. It may be a team that from time to time punches its fans in the stomach and kicks them in the face, but it is also a team that even in middle-age can make you feel like a teenager once again. Take that, forces of evil, whoever you are, wherever you are.

Fans can appreciate the game better by playing it © AFP

The recently concluded US Open confirmed for me what I’d been suspecting for a few weeks leading into it: I’d really started to like watching tennis. All over again. The graph of my tennis fanhood had probably peaked in the mid-1980s, and then steadily declined. Despite the brilliance of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, my interest in tennis never attained the heights it had reached when I was enthralled by the McEnroe-Borg rivalry. But this year, and the last, I’d noticed a renewed interest, and also managed to pinpoint a simple reason for it: I’d started to play tennis on a regular basis.

What does all of this have to do with cricket? My answer has two components. First, I’ll note that sadly, cricket’s hold on me seems to have declined, especially this year. Whether it is because I simply do not have the energy any more to deal with low-quality telecasts, the unfriendly time-zones, the lack of results in high-scoring subcontinental games, the proliferation of an unappealing format, the endless, nasty, nationalist bickering, the match-fixing or whatever else, cricket this year has played second fiddle to football, tennis and now, in the fall, baseball.

Secondly, I’ll take note of two articles I’d previously penned here. In one, I wrote of how I didn’t like playing cricket in the US because of the lack of cricketing context; and then another, in which, based on my experiences of watching cricket in Australia, it had seemed to me that a cricket-playing spectator was likely to have a more informed response to the game in front of him.

My experience with watching tennis this year has now convinced me that if I’m to rekindle my interest in cricket as a spectator sport, it will be by making cricket a personal endeavour again, by playing the game myself. International cricket holds many disappointments for me (as I write this, yet another accusation of conspiracy is starting to make the rounds), but perhaps the personal game itself will retain its attractions.

For I discovered, after several weeks of playing tennis regularly, that my tennis-watching senses had become sharpened: even an encounter between minor-league players seemed attractive, for I had more to pay attention to, more to note, more to observe and critique. The game's edges became sharper; my response to the player’s skills was more measured, appreciative, and nuanced.

With cricket, it seems to me that I’d done the reverse. As long as I’ve lived in the US, I’ve not played cricket. This, of course, was not the case when I lived in India or in Australia. Of course, there is the lack of a cricketing context in the US, but I’d compounded it by not playing. Not coincidentally, the last time I can really remember being enthralled by cricket since I’ve returned from Australia has been on my various visits to India and Australia. The US will never provide that sort of background to my cricket-watching, but I can do my bit by simply picking up bat and ball.

And I can do so in the most American of ways. A young New York local, who I’ve become friendly with in the past few months, coaches a group of Bangladeshi schoolboys in a New York school league (how about that for a role reversal?), and has invited me to join them for a game or two. Next year, I plan to take up that invitation. What the international game won’t do, perhaps this lower-level game will.

Steve Davies starred in England's ODI win over Pakistan © Getty Images

It was a relief to have an ordinary game of 50-over cricket on Friday. (All right, 41-over cricket, but you know what I mean.) Neither England nor Pakistan played particularly well or particularly badly, and the team which played a little better than their opponents ran out the winners. That the winners were England was not very surprising: they've become a very good one-day team over the last 12 months, and the present Pakistan squad are probably only capable of being a good team rather than a very good one.

The absence of the alleged spot-fixers clearly weakens Pakistan's playing strength, though it goes a long way towards re-establishing their moral strength, especially with Shahid Afridi as their leader. All the gossip points to his having absolutely clean hands with regard to shady dealings with bookmakers, which is unsurprising given that shadiness has never been one of his characteristics: here is a man who cheats extravagantly in public, whether it be eating the ball or dancing in the middle of the wicket, so it seems very unlikely that he would waste his time committing crimes without an audience.

He was unable to work any leadership magic on the shell-shocked team for the Twenty20s, which were appalling games of cricket as a result: Pakistan were physically present but their minds were obviously elsewhere. But with the suspected villains on their way home and the news reporters congregating at Heathrow rather than Chester-le-Street, they managed to get round to concentrating on cricket and played tolerably well.

I'm not sure why anyone other than the authorities would be scrutinising these games for evidence of corruption: even illegal bookmakers know when to lie low, and I can't believe any player would be stupid enough to try anything with the spotlight on full glare. (Not that I have any high estimation of international cricketers' intelligence when Kevin Pietersen and Dimitri Mascarenhas have been exemplifying the “twit” in Twitter.)

But you'd have to be extraordinarily suspicious to find anything amiss with Friday's game. There were certainly fumbles and dropped catches by both sides, some batsmen got out to silly shots and some bowlers delivered some rubbish balls, but the same players also usually managed something approaching excellence on other plays. The no-balls were mainly by England, and Stuart Broad's irritation with being called was all too obvious, as is so often the case with England's nominee for Obnoxious Cricketer of the Year, an award which ICC should establish as soon as possible.

The game actually turned on one duel: Steve Davies had an exceptionally good game, largely because he was able to take full toll of Umar Gul having a very bad one. Gul was bowling the lengths and lines which have been very effective for him against most batsmen, but he didn't seem to notice that Davies is about as likely to come forward when batting as he is to volunteer to have his eyes poked with sharp sticks, and thus served up a menu which was entirely to Davies' taste.

Other than those two, though, what we got was ordinariness. In other circumstances, one might well complain about the flaws in both sides's performances, but on this occasion it was comforting to see little more than decency speckled with evidence of normal human frailty. It could quite easily have been a mid-season game between mid-table counties.

We can certainly hope that the remaining matches will be better exhibitions of international-class cricket, but Friday's routine mediocrity was just the sedative the game of cricket needed.