Owais Mughal

Mohammad Yousuf completed 8000 runs in One Day Internationals (ODIs) today. He is Pakistan’s 3rd and World’s 17th batsman to reach this cricket milestone.

The list of Pakistan’s top 10 batsmen in terms of career runs is as follows. The number in parenthesis is their World Ranking in terms of ODI career runs.

1.(3) Inzamam-ul-Haq: 11739 runs at 39.52 runs per innings
2.(12) Saeed Anwar: 8823 runs at 39.21
3.(17) Mohammad Yousuf: 8028 runs at 41.16
4.(20) Javed Miandad: 7381 runs at 41.7
5.(21) Saleem Malik: 7170 runs at 32.88
6.(30) Ijaz Ahmed: 6564 runs at 32.33
7.(38) Rameez Raja: 5841 runs at 32.09
8.(49) Shahid Afridi: 5072 runs at 23.37
9. Aamer Sohail: 4780 runs at 31.86
10. Abdul Razzak: 4465 runs at 29.96

Adil Najam

I was talking to a friend yesterday about Pakistan’s traumatic politics and remembered these really funny verses from Khalid Masood:

Luch lafang elect huwa hai annay-wa
Beeba phir reject huwa hai annay-wa
Sooe pay dhaga daalnay waali nokri pay
Anna aik select huwa hai annay-wa

We had featured these in a post very early in ATP’s life and a reader had translated it as such:

Gangsters and thugs have been elected blindly
And good people have been rejected blindly
For the job of threading the needle
A blind person has selected blindly

Raza Rumi

How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.
-William Shakespeare

I grew up in the post-East Pakistan era, and my only exposure to Bangladesh was initially through textbooks that were at best sheepish about the events surrounding its liberation. History was suspended by the school narratives. As a young adult, I was exposed to the injustices once meted out to Pakistan’s largest wing by an outspoken history teacher. Later, when I blurted out those acquired facts in characteristic drawing room discussions, I sensed an unease; silence was advised by a discerning elder.

…The title photo above is of Curzon Hall at Dhaka University…

Such silence, unfortunately, haunted the post-1971 social and cultural milieu of Pakistan. Later in life when I met real Bangladeshis, as opposed to the fictional characters that existed in my mental landscape, I felt a strange affinity despite the fact that we came from contested histories and realities. At college in London I remember long discussions with Bangladeshi friends where we disagreed yet agreed that we had a common future.