Smith bears the burden of expectation

For Pakistan counterpart Misbah, it is quite simply a matter of survival

A FEW words each from Graeme Smith and Misbah-ul-Haq illustrated the stark contrast between SA and Pakistan going into the first Test at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi today.

Smith is the justifiably proud captain of the world’s undisputed Test champions. Misbah holds down a job trying to convince his men to play to their potential more often than they do. Both men are under pressure.

For Smith, expectation looms larger with each series.

“It might take us a bit of time to get back up to where we were last season, when we were battle-hardened,” he said on Saturday.

For Misbah, simple survival is a luxury. “In Pakistan, you can’t look three years ahead,” was his wry reply when asked if, having been appointed captain almost three years ago, he thought he would last this long.

Misbah’s journey as captain began in Dubai on November 12, 2010 in the first of two Tests against SA that produced dull cricket and were duly drawn.

But they also marked the beginning of the end of SA’s inability to play a game as good as the one they talked.

Drawn home series against India and Australia, and a first-ever Test loss in SA to Sri Lanka — though the series was won — would follow before Smith’s men steadied themselves with a disciplined victory in New Zealand.

Then came last year’s triumph in England and with it the No 1 ranking, which in a glorious last summer was defended in Australia and was not going anywhere in the hidings dealt to New Zealand and Pakistan.

Since Smith and Misbah met for the first time as Test captains, Pakistan have beaten New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and England in series, lost rubbers against Sri Lanka and SA, drawn one in Zimbabwe, and beaten the Zimbabweans in a one-off Test.

But the teams’ recent records are, however, more similar than would have been thought.

The Proteas have played 22 Tests since that 2010 desert duel, of which they have won 13, lost three and drawn six.

In the same period, Pakistan have played 21 Tests, won 10, lost six and drawn five. How much more similar would those figures be had Pakistan not played all of their matches away from home? SA, however, last lost a Test on the road in Kolkata in February 2010.

The fact that the Proteas are top of the rankings and Pakistan are sixth, has much to do with the quality of their respective opponents. That much is plain from the scenarios possible in the series starting today.

A 1-0 or 2-0 win for Pakistan would leapfrog them over Australia into fourth place.

However, a 2-0 win for SA would earn them just one point while anything less would be costly — they will lose four points for a drawn series, eight if they go down 1-0, and 10 for a 2-0 defeat.

“When you get close to a Test match, you can always feel the intensity rising,” Smith said.

What will ease the pressure for Smith, though, is that Jacques Kallis, who played the last of his 162 Tests against Pakistan in February this year, and has not featured in a limited overs international since early last year, has returned refreshed and eager to play.

“After 17-18 years I needed a good three months away so it’s been a pleasurable period. I could refresh my mind and get a niggle sorted out,” Kallis said yesterday.

The 37-year-old, who hit a confident 70 in the drawn side game ahead of the two-Test series, said he was feeling good. “I am hitting the ball as well as I have ever hit and probably playing the best cricket of my life.

“From that point of view, it’s been two weeks of good work,” said Kallis, who hit successive hundreds against Pakistan in the drawn two-match series here three years ago.

Kallis said he was confident the South African batsmen would handle Pakistan’s spinners, led by the superb off-spin of Saeed Ajmal.

“We probably play spin as well as anybody. Our record shows that.

“Our players have got some good game plans against it and we’ve scored some big runs and got some good results in the subcontinent,” said Kallis, who has 1,552 runs in 17 Tests, with six hundreds against Pakistan.