T20 World Cup: Pakistan’s own ‘Captain Cool’ keeps his poise ahead of India game

Colombo: The Premadasa was buzzing on Saturday afternoon. The general talking point one could overhear around the sizeable media contingent from both sides was on the lines of “let’s finish off the enemy”.Thankfully, there was no fire exchanged when Salman Ali Agha, the Pakistan captain, began his pleasantly surprising interaction.

Agha displayed remarkable poise and an admirable, non-combative approach. His message was loud and clear — the Pakistan cricket team is here to play a game of cricket and not fight a proxy war.While almost every question from the Indian contingent was entertained, it was Agha’s response to a question on Abhishek Sharma’s health that revealed, most of all, what an excellent sports ambassador he was.“I really hope he recovers and plays the game. He is a terrific player and we want to play against the best,” Agha said, just showed all the respect that the best T20 batter in the world deserves.It sounded quite contrary to what Agha’s one-time teammate Mohammed Amir had said on a television show a couple of days ago, dismissing Abhishek as a “slogger”.It didn’t take long for the Pakistan media to rake up controversy, bringing up Harbhajan Singh’s comments on spinner Usman Tariq’s controversial bowling action. Agha was asked, “An Indian bowler whose action was questioned during his playing days is now questioning Tariq. What do you have to say?”Agha was in no mood to add fuel to the fire. “People are entitled to their opinion and they can say what they want to say.

I can tell you, Tariq himself doesn’t care. He is smart and mature. For us, he is just one of the 15 players, nothing more, nothing less.”There was a smile on Agha’s face when another Pak journalist took a cue from their training methods on Friday and asked whether they are “targeting some of the Indian players like Abhishek”. “We are not ‘targeting’ any player, we are just trying to counter what India has to offer as a team,” the captain said.And that was not enough. Questions were asked about the recent acrimony, all that has happened since the Asia Cup last Sept and whether Agha would be interested in shaking hands with the Indian captain. “It’s not up to me. And it doesn’t matter what I expect. If you ask me, I think the game should be (played in) the same (manner) since cricket started. The rest is up to them, whatever they want to do,” said Agha.Liberal or not, Agha is still the Pakistan captain. The pressure is immense and the demand is to win every game. He accepted that “India have been better than us in World Cups”. Asked whether he loses sleep over the immensity of the assignment, Agha smiled again. “I am sleeping okay. It’s just probably a few grey hairs that come with leading a country with 260 million people on the cricket field.”It’s safe to say Agha is doing his job well.