Older readers may remember a 1960s US television comedy called Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and a regular item on it called the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate in which fun was poked at the incompetence of a topical target. It probably wasn't great shakes in Pakistan and besides which Kamran Akmal is far too young to have watched it even if it had been. But even so, there it was, 20 minutes after lunch, the Fickle Finger, hovering over him, the chosen one.
Kamran arrived here this year with the reputation of being one of the most hapless wicketkeepers ever to have survived in Test cricket for any length of time – 50 Tests and counting – and since then has done little to disabuse anyone of that impression. He can be calamitous. This is the Clouseau of keeping. If Tommy Cooper had ever taken up the gauntlets, this would be: "Gloves, ball, ball, gloves ... ground." Just like that. In England's first innings, Kamran's capacity to drop the ball cost his perspiring bowlers and his team dearly. He uses gloves made by a firm with long and close association with Trent Bridge and the suggestion, made over a drink with a company big wig on Friday, is that they should double his money to use those of a rival instead.
By lunch though, as England batted again, he had taken two catches to see the back of the openers. The first, offered by Andrew Strauss, was deflected to him by his juggling brother Umar, clearly auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, and taken with a gleeful dive; the second, a legside flick and faint edge from Alastair Cook, was straightforward enough, although by no means copper bottomed. Then, in the space of two deliveries from Umar Gul, redemption was dangled in front of Kamran and then, just as he seemed to have grasped it in his white gloves, whisked away again.
Kevin Pietersen had battled away for an hour and quarter, trying to find some rhythm to his game and had looked as if he was starting to emerge from the darkside when Gul got one to jag back and bounce. Kamran had every right to be wrong-footed as the ball caught a thickish inside edge, but he changed direction instantly, dived to his left and, to his obvious glee, came up with the ball in his left hand – a quite magnificent catch. One in the eye for the critics then. Alas. Gul's next ball was shorter and wide of the new batsman Paul Collingwood, who flashed, edged, saw the ball disappear into Kamran's right glove and then bounce out again. Hero to zero in the time it takes to say St Godfrey of Evans.
These have been conditions in which keepers can be tested however, the edge always an option. Earlier in the day, Anuruddha Polonowita, Sri Lanka's national curator (groundsman in other words) had defended the surface at Colombo's SSC ground, where this week Sri Lanka and India batted each other into a stupor, saying, at length but in essence, that criticism of his pitch as too batsman-friendly was nonsense and that the bowling, against stellar batting on each side, had been rubbish. He has a point. Trent Bridge however has produced what is proving an enthralling contest, where ball (as opposed to the pitch), like Graeme Swann, has had a lot to say for itself.
With the singular exception of the record first-innings stand between Eoin Morgan and Collingwood, wickets have tumbled as batsmen have had trouble coping with the movement in the air, exploited so well by the trio of Pakistan pacemen and England's James Anderson. Trent Bridge has a well-earned reputation for swing, although when and why this should occur – configuration of the stands, proximity to the river, height of water table, fluctuations in the FTSE index or simply cloud cover– is a mystery.
As Mohammad Asif once more wobbled the ball around mesmerically, Kamran was forced into a little more active duty than, to judge by the reaction when so asked, he might have wished. Asif is a cannily deceptive bowler, who lopes in with total economy of effort; the bowling equivalent of easy listening. To try and negate the movement, or at least lessen it, both Pietersen and Jonathan Trott had opted to bat well out of their crease. This frustrates the bowler, particularly one of Asif's pace, for whom the obvious response is to ask the keeper to stand up to the stumps, forcing the batsman back into the crease, and susceptible once more to the swing.
Great medium and fast-medium bowlers had their keepers up to the stumps: Evans famously to Alec Bedser; while at Somerset, Tom Cartwright had Derek Taylor, with Leo Harrison there for Derek Shackleton at Hampshire. Salman Butt asked Kamran to do likewise, and he crept up with the reluctance of a young lad who has just been asked to wash behind his ears. Suffice to say it didn't last.
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