Trailing already by a margin of 2-0 having lost the first match by 20 runs and the second one by seven wickets, Pakistan, champions of last year's tournament, will be lucky if they are able to save the series before it is over.
Their task to do that will be even more difficult in the absence of Inzamam who will have to stay in the dressing room having been penalised with two match ban by the ICC referee Jackie Hendricks for entering the stands to strike a spectator after being provoked. The young batsman Hasan Raza will obviously now play in place of him. Not an established player still, he will be under immense pressure to strengthen an apparently weak and frail Pakistan batting line in this contest. Pakistan would naturally keep the left-arm spinner Mohammad Hussain whose credentials as a one-day player like that of Hasan Raza are still mind-boggling for everyone. The selectors, whoever they are, have got to be challenged on this.
To lose a batsman of the type of Inzamam's experience is a sad loss and Inzamam himself regrets the incident.
The man was not only abusing me and others from the stand on a megaphone but also he slurred me on my face while I was fielding,'' he says. That is all right for him to say that but surely his reaction shouldn't have been as callous as it was. He was lucky that he was restrained before he could hit the man with the bat. ``The spectator threw the megaphone at me which could have injured me badly and I reacted in retaliation.'' is Inzamam's verdict.
He has now got the punishment but the man who is even more guilty of that episode is Pakistan substitute Mohammad Hussain who had brought a bat from the dressing room during the interval and handed over to Inzamam to hit Shiv Singh, the spectator. Why is it that Mohammad Hussain took the bat from the dressing room on the field when Pakistan was fielding and not batting, is the question one must ask? Mohammad Hussain was somehow spared the punishment by the referee. He in fact deserves one from the PCB, a ban in fact for doing what he did. ``It was so silly he did that, I did not see him though taking a bat during the drinks interval or else I would have asked him the purpose of it,'' said Haroon Rashid, the coach.
``It was not a wise thing to do and it was sad and bad for the game. Fans have been hurling abuse at the players for two days and there is a limit for everything, said Ramiz Raja.
Mazullah, the manager, in the meanwhile was busy with the officials of the Pakistan High Commission to sort out the threat of a legal action against Inzamam by the spectator.
Pardeep Mandani, an Indian photographer from Delhi, said, ``Inzamam confronted the Indian fan after being heckled on a megaphone which could be heard throughout the ground. He dragged the spectator to the ground close to the advertisement hoardings and with a bat handed to him by his team-mate, threatened to hit him before security arrived''. ``Inzamam was called an 'Aaloo' and abused as well,'' he said.
He may have been called an Aaloo or a 'potato' in honour of his roundish frame but surely he shouldn't have reacted in the manner he did. The incident and Pakistan's batting failure were described by the 'Toronto Star' columnist Dave Perkins as this. ``He did not appear to hit anyone with the bat, that is consistent; the Pakistani batsmen were off the mark all day.''
He wrote further, There is two sides to every story and there is one side to this. An athlete can never go in to the stands to take matters into his own hands. It simply cannot be tolerated and if cricket is to have any credibility in this country today, the sports governing body will act firmly in this matter beyond the laughable two-game suspension it gave him.''
Fair enough but how about the organisers of this tournament in Toronto who failed miserably to take notice of complaints made by the players about the presence of megaphones in the crowd and insults hurled at them.
``The fault lay with the organisers for allowing megaphones in the hands of spectators.It does not happen anywhere in the world,'' said Wasim Akram, the former Pakistan captain who is here as an expert commentator. Police is investigating the matter after the involved spectator Shiv Kumar Singh Thind filed a complaint to the police. He claims he has been kicked by Inzamam and he is hurt on the head. ``Inzamam says I retaliated after he threw the megaphone at me.''