Kamran Akmal

Kamran Akmal helps Ross Taylor to a hundred

Pakistan’s last five overs went for 100, largely thanks to Ross Taylor. Earlier in his innings, Taylor had been given a couple of lives by – who else – Kamran Akmal.

Kamran Akmal amazes us. We hope he never goes away. You’d think the ability to catch might be an entry requirement for wicketkeepers – particularly international ones – yet Akmal seems to have footballs made of ice instead of hands – slippery, round, smooth things wholly unsuited to capturing a lofted cricket ball.

Asking Kamran Akmal to keep wicket is like asking a clouded leopard to look after your chickens while you’re on holiday. Day one, he comes round and he scatters some grain for them. Day two, he comes round and he scatters some grain for them. Day three, he comes round and he scatters some grain for them. Then he stops.

‘Hang on,’ he asks himself. ‘Am I a clouded leopard?’ He takes a look down at himself and sees a distinctive cloud-like pattern. ‘That proves nothing,’ he thinks, eyeing the chickens. ‘Although then again, I do have powerful legs equipped with rotating rear ankles that allow me to safely climb downwards in a head-first posture, much like a common squirrel.’

‘Sod it,’ he says. ‘I am going to eat those chickens.’

You see, it’s not that Kamran Akmal isn’t trying. He’s just doing a job for which he is entirely unsuited.

Umar Akmal won’t play if Kamran Akmal doesn’t play

Just when you think that international cricket can’t get any more like the playground, it does. It’s only a matter of time before someone breaks a window with a shit shot on goal and everyone gets bollocked for it.

There are mutterings that Umar Akmal isn’t really injured, that it’s actually a protest that his brother, Kamran, might be dropped from the Pakistan team.

Umar seems to think that Kamran being dropped is the problem. It’s not. The fact that Kamran has a pair of toasted sandwich makers instead of hands is the problem.

Kamran Akmal slogs some sixes

We’re worried about Pakistan. No-one will tour there and they’re hardly playing. We don’t want their side to deteriorate. If Pakistan become an unofficial second tier nation, cricket will lose its most wilfully unpredictable team.

Pakistan have banned their best batsman and had their best bowler banned for them. You look at them now and they look mediocre. Then they chase down 295, achieving their target off the penultimate ball, with their wicketkeeper, Kamran Akmal, hitting 24 off nine balls.

In their next match they will be bowled out for three. Shahid Afridi will walk out, only to return and hit a double hundred in the match after that. Then Waqar Younis will make a comeback. Then someone you’ve never heard of will bowl at 100mph and hit eight sixes off three balls.

Misbah-ul-Haq defies India along with Kamran Akmal

It seemed about time that Misbah-ul-Haq hit a Test hundred. One fifty wasn’t much of a Test record for someone we seem to write about on an almost daily basis.

He hit 161 not out against India, largely in partnership with Kamran Akmal who hit 119. Akmal’s innings should ensure he has plenty more opportunities to drop catches for Pakistan.

That’s what you want in a modern wicketkeeper – occasional innings that keep the selectors kidding themselves that you’re the next Gilchrist, allied with gloved clangers by the bucketload. That’s gloved ‘clangers’, as in ‘errors’ and not gloved ‘Clangers’, the whistling, woollen, miniature moon anteaters of children’s TV fame.

Misbah-ul-Haq’s innings took 351 balls. Twenty20 sloggery and Test blockery – what a guy.