Celebrations left on hold?
If I ever got the power to change something from our daily lives, believe me, I will not even wait for a single moment before declaring it illegal to have cricket and football matches during the time where students have their exams. Despite regularly hearing, “You can study in front of the television”, the bitter truth is that for someone who hardly has an attention span of 20 minutes, losing focus isn’t that hard especially when Rameez Raja shouts, “AFRIDI YOU BEAUTY!!!!!!” Nevertheless, we all do try our best to live the best of both worlds, excelling in education as well as enjoying the highly tensed matches.
With a Lab quiz a day later and all of us clueless on what to do, on Sunday night, it was decided that we will prepare together, having everyone’s little input as none of us attended the SDA Lab classes. What we forgot was the highly anticipated PSL match between Lahore Qalandars and Islamabad United. Well maybe we did remember but considering the ‘amazing’ record of Lahore Qalandars and the position of Islamabad United as League leaders, it was expected to be a walk in the park for the Islamabad side. Watching the match at home around 7 p.m. Lahore did little to motivate me to continue watching as Fakhar and Chris Lynn departed in quick succession, with Hafeez walking out to bat. Expecting another collapse, I called my Careem and was off to LUMS.
Since most of my friends are smarty pants (MashAllah and not in a bad way), I generally tend to revise everything before meeting them for group studies so I can give a significant output rather than sitting there concentrating on what they are referring to. After investing half an hour in my self-study, I decided to go to Jamin Java where Safa was having dinner. Entered Jamin, heard a massive cheer from the projector screen placed right next to the entrance, only to discover Hafeez was playing a master-class, batting at a respectable score of 62. Most of you may be aware that I met Hafeez twice within a month (yes he knows me too now), and bragged a lot on how he came to ask for batting tips and strategies to lead the side. That flex quickly backfired as Hafeez was consistently disappointing the Lahoris and my friends didn’t spare me either by placing all the blame on “my tips”.
Next, the inner “shooda” side of my personality quickly came back as I approached Safa, who is from Islamabad and a die-hard cricket fan too, and started my trash talk on how LQ would crush IU. More importantly, since Safa told everyone about my childish behavior when I saw Hafeez, I spared no second to annoy her as much I possibly could, reminding her that I told him to save his best for the end. After every six, I would let out a mini scream of joy, intentionally pissing off my friend from the capital, honestly looking slightly extra as no one else at the café seemed bothered with the match. Eventually, Lahore Qalandars posted a humongous target of 183 to chase down with Hafeez remaining not out, 3 runs shy of a well-deserved century.
When the next innings started, Islamabad could not have expected to be in such a mess, as within the power-play they lost their three main batsmen. With the top three back in the pavilion, I expected it to be something like the Champions Trophy Final where India failed to recover from the early wickets of Rohit, Virat, and Dhawan. With one foot set in victory, it was time to call another pal who was surrounded by Islamabad supporters and at that particular moment may have been jumping with joy. Umar may not pick a call even if you tell him you need help but if he knows you want to discuss cricket, he’ll pick up the call on the very first bell (Cricket love>everything else).
Umar: Yeh Shadab Bhi koi player hay? Abhi Shinwari out karay ga aur phir sab expose ho Jain gay.
Me: Yeh to awein hype thi…….Lahore is back.
During the call, Shadab top-edged a bouncer from Shinwari, with an easy catch for the fine-leg fielder. Jumping in delight, I literally ran out of Jamin to celebrate an inevitable victory, only for Umar to announce that the bowler overstepped, Shadab returning, with a free-hit to be bowled. Feeling slightly embarrassed over the exaggerated celebration and the prospect of a possible fightback from Islamabad, I suggested that we begin practicing “STATA” for the quiz in the morning. On the way to IST from SDSB, I regularly kept checking the score, blissful that the required run-rate kept rising, reducing their chances of a potential victory. Occupying the whole last row of computers in IST, we began skimming through our notes, typing in codes, celebrating every successful coding. Meanwhile, Umar texted, “Check the Match”. So on one of the vacant computers, we decided to live stream the match while working on the other two as Monum and Aamna Asghar joined us too.
Was I watching Steven Smith play for Islamabad? An above-average leg spinner who came up the order, leading his side, dominating fast bowlers with his flicks and unorthodox sweep shots? While you may be misled to think it is him, it was none other than Shadab Khan. After months of constant criticism, he decided to promote himself up the order and was playing a match-winning knock, scoring around 12 per over. So now our ‘group study’ consisted of 7–8 people from Ferra Nova, even though only four of them were enrolled in SDA. Everyone got a chair and found a spot to watch the match on the computer screen. The hell with ‘parhai’ as this was just too serious. So except for Monum and myself, everyone was backing Islamabad even though some of them were from Karachi and Faisalabad mainly because I was getting too serious and they wanted to piss me even further. Unexpectedly the whole situation changed within two overs after the successive wickets of Shadab and Asif Ali. So an overly enthusiastic Faaiz started bolstering Lahore, show-offing the superiority of Lahore, labeling it as the victory needed to kickstart the campaign ending with Lahore holding the prestigious trophy (I will admit I got carried away here slightly).
With one wicket determining victory and defeat, it was getting fairly stressful watching that match. Every single ball of Shaheen Shah’s second last over gave a vibe that a wicket was just around the corner but Musa Khan showcased his nerves of steel, surviving one of the most brutal spells of fast-bowling. With the final over about to begin, the stakes increased as I promised everyone ice cream if Lahore won, but Shinwari proved why Karachi sold him in the first place by bowling a half-tracker, allowing Musa to free his arms, smashing a six over the mid-wicket boundary. The equation became a fairly simple one with a run needed on the last ball.
My mummy once told me that my expressions are the same since my childhood. I think she was right as the blank look on my face was an exact copy of a younger Faaiz. Furious with the loss, dejected with the pathetic performance, cursing myself for selecting Lahore Qalandars and Manchester United as teams to support (lol both don’t win), I was more surprised that the concerning thing for Aamna Babar was “Shit yar ab to ice cream bhi gayi”. Although my friends didn’t hold themselves back from mocking me, they were courteous enough to treat me with Waffles from Bunker Café after the match around midnight. Have you ever seen an agitated baby who refuses to eat until his mama comes and forces him to have some? Well if you haven’t, you would have seen a 20-year-old give a practical demonstration of how it’s properly done. Sitting alone on the stairs with a firm stance “Mujhay bhuk nahi”, my friends especially Safa, Moiz, Monum, Iman, and Aamna came forward and forced me to have some. Well sometimes I wonder that I need to let go of such petty things but who am I kidding? There’s a long way to go before this happens. Eventually, my parents came to pick me up as I left with a look of disappointment.
My parents were well aware of my dramatic behavior after such close matches therefore weren’t even bothered after seeing my hangdog look. At home, my WhatsApp was flooded with messages like “it’s just a game, don’t take it to your heart” the message that caught my attention was from Aamna Asghar telling me I have forgotten my notebook at LUMS-the one I needed for preparing my exam in the morning. So I invested four hours of the night before a quiz for a group study session at university which lasted only 15 minutes and even forgot my notebook from which I was meant to study the whole night? Yes, that’s how bad it went. Unsurprisingly, the teacher prepared an extremely difficult quiz and all of us did miserably in it.
This particular incident had such a negative impact on me that a day before the SDA midterm, Javed Afridi gifted my dad 5 VIP passes for the game between Lahore and Peshawar. Remembering my last experience, I vowed I will stay at home and study while comforting myself that I have already watched four matches at the stadium so it’s not a major loss. That match proved to be one of the most entertaining matches of that PSL and to further scrub salt on my wounds, my brothers ended up meeting Zainab Abbas. After watching her start her career with a sports show on Dunya News to every single Cricket tournament, I desperately wanted to meet her. I did saw her once at Standard Chartered Bank but was overthinking situations so I never approached her. While I was studying binominal theorem at home, my brothers were taking selfies at Qaddafi Stadium. Life is so unfair. If only I knew Corona would prevent all such activities for the future with University also gifting us with “Pass/Fail Policy”, I would’ve gone regardless of the grade I got in the exam.
Unlike my other stories, this one does not come with a moral lesson. I just love talking about it as it was one of the most memorable days of the semester even if it did not end in my favor. Now I am not even sure if we would even see a match together considering the upcoming semester is meant to be online. And would like to end it with a famous sentence from Abrar-ul-Haq’s song “Pani ka bulbula”
“4 dinaan di dunya way, kuch kha lay pi lay mooj ura”
