Bye Inzi!

Can you totally tell that I'm out of it? I thought this weekend would be relaxing, but I'm so exhausted and I have no idea why. I want the rain to come back in Joburg! It keeps me sane and happy...not this flippin' sun. Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong country...Though it was the storm yesterday that stopped me from updating. Apologies to the 1 or 2 people who read this regularly...and thank you for reading!

Anyways, enough about me and my weather issues. Pakistani cricket, as always, has something going on. As discussed before, Inzimam Ul Haq will be playing in the Lahore Test against SA and he hopes to score the 20 runs to beat Javed Miandad's record and maybe even get a century, to go out in style.

"I spoke to the board and selectors and the first Test was originally offered to me but I wasn't mentally ready to come back to Test cricket then. It was my idea to play in Lahore and then say 'Thank you very much'."

"I am really grateful to the board for their gesture as nobody else has been able to leave the game like this. Not Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saeed Anwar or Javed Miandad, it has not been the tradition. No previous board chairman has shown the kind of respect that Nasim Ashraf is showing to me by allowing me to leave the game in this way."

"I need a century against South Africa to have a set of Test hundreds against every country I have played against," he said, "so it would be a good thing to make a century and beat Javed Miandad's record but more importantly it would be good for Pakistan to win the game and draw the series."

That's so sweet, really it is. I hope that he finishes on a high...unlike poor Brian Lara in the WC (that was sad). So no stupid running...but reports are also in that Inzi is looking a lot fitter, so yay. He thinks he also has a year or two left in him, but since he thinks that he's much older than the young Pakistani team, maybe things wouldn't be all great in th dressing room. Despite my previous rants, on and offline, I really do respect the big man and I'd love to see him leave cricket with his head held high. Just this time I mustn't cry!

Graeme Smith, the clever monkey that he is, thinks Pakistan are at the risk of being distracted because Inzi will be back on the field, especially captain Shoaib Malik.

"They have a young captain and how he is going to manage that is going to be key for him. It can put a lot of pressure on him. Inzamam carries a huge aura around him in this set-up, which I have noticed playing against Pakistan in the last two years. It will be key how he [Malik] handles it."

Finally, the charges against Shoaib Akhtar were dropped...well, the one's saying he went on a rage-fueled bat rampage against Mohammad Asif. So all is well and Shahid Afridi says he forgives Akhtar for the allegations against him during Ramadan and says it was the PCB that reported Akhtar, not him.

What to believe, what to believe...