da supremo： Bruce Talbot reviews Mushtaq Ahmed’s Twenty20 Vision: My Life and Inspiration

da casino： Bruce Talbot25-Feb-2007Twenty20 Vision: My Life and Inspiration by Mushtaq Ahmed £16.99
Methuen; 213pp

Reborn as a cricketer, as a person © Getty Images
Mushtaq Ahmed has told hislife story in the same enthusiasticway he has played his cricket forthe last 20 years. And if Mushymeans nothing more to you thanthe bushy-bearded sorcerer whoselegbreaks and googlies have helpedtransform Sussex into the mostsuccessful county in the country,then there is plenty here which willboth surprise and inform.An international at 18,Mushtaq played a key role in thegreatest triumph in the historyof Pakistan cricket when ImranKhan’s ‘cornered tigers’ won the1992 World Cup after Imran hadpersonally intervened to get him inthe squad. That golden generationshould have achieved much more and it often pains Mushtaq to admitit: “Since the days of Imran almostevery player believed he was thestar and that destroyed any chanceof team unity.”There is no attempt to glossover incidents which cast a shadowover the early part of his career.His involvement in the 1994match-fixing scandal and theepisode on a Grenada beach in1993, when he, Wasim Akram,Aqib Javed and Waqar Youniswere held by gun-toting policeaccused of smoking pot, are givenan appraisal which is painfullyhonest.By 1998 Mushtaq had goneoff the rails. He had become tooWesternised, did not want to bowlfor Somerset and regarded himselfas selfish and self-centred. The mostfascinating chapter tells how here-affirmed his faith in Islam, initially at a three-day Muslimsupport group, having been takenthere reluctantly by the formerPakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain.Mushtaq was re-born as a personand eventually as a cricketer,although Sussex supporters will bedisappointed that only six pages- the smallest chapter in the book- are devoted to his amazing successwith the county since 2003.His outstanding county career isstrangely ignored in a statisticalappendix that does not dojustice to his record and it isa shame that the publisher’sbudget did not stretch to a widerselection of photographs. But theseare minor gripes. Mushtaq haswritten that rarity among currentplayers – an honest appraisal ofhis life so far. Sussex supporters inparticular will hope there are a fewmore chapters left to tell.