Misbah-ul-Haq’s utility lies in the fear of his absence. What will happen to the Pakistan cricket team without him? That fear overshadows what’s happening to Pakistan with him. The easiest, and the nicest, line to say about him is this: Only when he retires will we know what he meant to the Pakistan team. A reputation built on fear of unknown, almost. Often, the 40-year-old Misbah gives the impression that he was born to play in a Pakistani team in a decline. A kind of a guy who makes you say, ‘yeah he is dour, colourless and his batting is reduced to delaying the inevitable but just imagine if he isn’t there, this team can fall apart.

There he was yesterday in Napier, a day before the game against the UAE, talking about this and that. He stares ahead at nothing in particular, collecting his thoughts, as he speaks in flat tone that further accentuates the stereotype of a quiet, decent man doing his best in a tough situation. There is always a sense of restraint and abstinence about him. As if he is holding himself back. Just like his batting.

No one but him can make a smile feel like a sigh. A question on whether the opener Nasir Jamshed, who has triggered a wonderful parody account on twitter, will play is asked. Hasn’t the time come to shake things at the top of the order? Misbah offers that sigh of a smile. “It’s not as if Nasir has played 9 games. He has just played two games. We will have a team meeting today. We shall see.”

Been there

He is a sensible man, one of the sanest players out there in fact. A question comes about how the fans are talking about a rewind to 1992. Similar situation and all. Pakistan just about beat Zimbabwe in their last game and now need to win the next three games to make it to the knockouts. That sigh-smile of his again. A lesser man might have, at least in public, talked about ‘yes yes, why not, we will puff our chests out, we will do this and that’. Misbah knows better.

“It’s a totally different scenario, different situation. Obviously we can take some motivation from that situation, but what is important for us now it that we just have to play well, and that’s the simple scenario for us. Don’t just fall into 1992 that we did it, so we’re going to do it. I mean, we have to do it. We have to if we want to go into the next round. We have to really perform well tomorrow and then against South Africa and then against Ireland. If we are unable to perform in one game, we can be out of this tournament.”

Three times he is asked, twice in English and once in Urdu, about how playing three games in the next six days is going to take a toll and is the scheduling a bit unfair on Pakistan?

Misbah says it would be tough and talks about how difficult it’s going to be with the weather different in each city, but says it’s what it is. That his team will have to cope and deliver. Afterward, one young Pakistani journalist is genuinely confused. Should we be reporting that Misbah has criticised the scheduling. The seniors laugh. They know that Misbah isn’t the guy to crib, he will just shoulder on.

Resigned to hope

People are confidently hopeful, cautiously hopeful and some are resigned to defeat but can someone be resigned to hope? Misbah comes closest to it. Asked how he is handling the batting collapses, he went: “What can you do? I mean, you have to just think positive even if somebody is not performing well at the top.

“Whatever is happening is just happening in a couple of deliveries. We are losing wickets in the first over and second over, so you can’t say much about that. But obviously we are thinking about that because we can’t just go the whole tournament like that. But cricket is a game of uncertainties. Sometimes you’ve got four, five poor innings and suddenly you have a hundred. Our batsmen are capable of that.”

Pakistan need a crushing, dominating win against the UAE. Can they?