Justice For Fawad

There are many levels of incredible. There is kissing-a-blackhole-during-interstellar-voyage incredible, Multiverse incredible, Hyperloop incredible, even Learning-Chinese-Mandarin-in-a-few-lectures incredible. Okay, I made the last one up myself. And then there is the top most level of incredible. A level that garners huge levels of curiosity towards itself. A level that you might have never heard of if you were in an ideal, parallel world. Fawad. Bleep. Alam.
If you’re a kid who gets to watch franchise T20s around the globe literally every night of the calendar year, and barely even know there exists a domestic cricketing body in your own backyard, where by the way the legend of Fawad Alam exists, but know about a league that is yet to begin and is already all at sea; Global T20 League in South Africa (it may or may not have something to do with a 10-year old cousin of mine), that isn’t your fault, at all. You can chill because you’re built to not know him. After all, even Yasir Arafat – a T20 specialist – has played as many Tests as Alam. Maybe in some other universe, Earth-25 preferably (his ODI shirt number, and the number in his Twitter handle), Fawad Alam would have as many Test runs as he has in Pakistan's First Class system. Here in this imperfect Earth though, he must be sitting on a three-legged chair, wondering what exactly went wrong, if it, on his account, did, at all. You can't just find yourself playing the Quaid-e-Azam trophy while the national team is competing (read: losing) on the deserts at the tail of this continent if you scored most runs by any batsman in the second innings of your debut Test away from home in all of Test cricket's 140-year history. Nah man, that shouldn't be incredible. But, it is. That we are discussing Alam even after the #MisYou departure – unarguably and statistically Pakistan's most proficient duo – shows there is something that doesn’t feel right, this is daal-mein-kuchh-kaala level of incredible.
It can be argued Fawad's selection matter in front of the selection committee was pondered over for lesser time than it took me to write this piece - I effectively wrote the bulk of this feature on the drive home from university, it certainly helped that I wasn't behind the steering wheel - but the members of selection panel sure were, and they steered away from Fawad as far as they could. If you were to make a list, there won’t be much boxes that he doesn’t tick, or at least grazes. He has played a few side games in the meanwhile, a game each in Australia & England, two in the UAE, and three in Sri Lanka, but has failed to make it to the final squads. And not just First Class, his List A performances as well as his short span in the Pak ODI team in 2014-15 haven’t been bad at all. I actually did a piece, more than 15 months ago, where I dissected his ODI numbers pre and post his comeback.
Okay, now this piece is gonna get boring - not that it wasn't already - and all statistical. I won’t bore you with the records apropos his Test debut so long ago that Pakistan have had 4 Prime Ministers in the meantime, although none completed their official term, much like Fawad in a way that he couldn’t get to find himself in the team setup after clean sweeping his debut, or per se, elections. But, his first class statistics need to be put in front of the world. A look at his numbers will surely tell how astounding has he been in the domestic circuit since debuting in 2003.
Of the 913 batsmen to have scored over 10,000 runs in first class cricket, Fawad Alam averages more than 98.46% of them; only 13 are ahead of him, while he has the sixth-best average among all Asians. He, in fact, is the only Pakistani in the top 20, next best is Javed Miandad at 35. His average of 56.12 is the third highest among all batsmen starting their careers in this millennium. Since making his FC debut, he has scored 16.37% of all the runs scored by his team; for Pakistani teams, only Misbah-ul-Haq, Zaheer Abbas, Rizwan-uz-Zaman and Hanif Mohammad have contributed more (qualification: min individual runs; 9000+, min team runs; 50000+).
Such is the enormity of Fawad Alam’s domestic numbers that even his first FC century was a match-defining effort. Coming at 92/5, his 133-ball 128* (now that’s a fast knock by any standards, so much for the cliché surrounding his strike rate) alongside Rajesh Ramesh’s 100 helped Karachi Harbour reach a respectable total of 351. (Abbottabad ultimately collapsed to 301 all out from 268/4 chasing 339 in the fourth innings).
His highest FC score, 296* off 294, also happens to find its place in a few lists bulked with some of the elites of the game, including one of the biggest innings, as well as fourth most runs in a day in Pakistan in this millennium.
But these one-off innings don’t matter at all if you can’t apply yourself in partnerships, and your guy Fawad has had 14 FC century partnerships in Pakistan, if you want to compare, Misbah also had 14 such partnerships. And not just that, Fawad is also adept at making big partnerships with the tail-enders; his 218-run with Rajesh Ramesh in the game aforementioned is the highest 9^th wicket partnership in first class games in Pakistan ever, and 20^th worldwide (7^th in this millennium). He’s also had a 154-run 9^th wicket partnership with Anwar Ali, 15^th highest, to go with partnering for a 165-run 8^th wicket partnership with Mohammad Sami.
He’s had a quiet run in this Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Pakistan’s premium first class tournament, so far, with just one fifty in 4 innings, but his numbers over the years have been astonishing to say the least; in 12 seasons, he has averaged 53.60, 49.11, 55.27, 97.70, 83.60, 64.00, 62.47, 48.54, 54.83, 71.90, 56.00 and 55.44, certainly enough to not be overlooked. Over the past three first class seasons, he's averaged nearly 60, only Kamran Akmal and Asif Zakir have scored more runs than him, while only the former has averaged more than him among players with at least 1500 runs.
With Pakistan struggling big time against Sri Lanka, Fawad could be your answer to all worries surrounding the Test arena, and might be the best candidate to un-vacate one of the seats left by MisYou. His eagerness and alacrity to qualify for the Pakistan colours has been on show for the past few seasons, and who knows, if a 36-year old could make a grand comeback in 2010, what might be in the box for 32-year old Alam. We could as well be sitting here lauding him as he brings Pakistan their second Test mace, let’s just say, in a decade (these lines sound a hell of a lot better with a Hans Zimmer track in the background, thank me later). Unless there is some sudden change in fixtures, Pakistan don’t play any more Tests till May 2018; 2-Test series in England, and one can only cross his fingers and toes that Fawad will find a place in that squad.