The Pakistani cricket team is the most compelling on the planet. A side always full of indolent match-winners, always as capable of losing a game as they are of winning it. Dropped catches, missed run-outs, batting collapses: the history of Pakistan is one of incompetence illuminated by occasional brilliance. For every success, there’s a failure: Imran Khan’s cornered tigers of 1992 undercut by an aborted Misbah Al-Haq scoop for six in 2007, defeat grasped when victory was in reach. A certain arrogance, volatility, an appetite for provocation: these are the key ingredients at the heart of every Pakistani side.
Making the fantastical appear mundane is part and parcel of watching Pakistan, and it contributes to a general feeling of unreality, of unease. You can’t trust your senses, your eyes, your logic, because the side you’re watching has defied probability over and over again. The team is no longer a concrete thing, instead resembling a vapour, a mood, a collection of moments that provoke deep emotion. Being held captive by that mood is central to the condition of being a Pakistan fan. It’s a feeling given a name in Osman Samiuddin’s excellent 2018 essay in Wisden, ‘The Haal of Pakistan’.
Osman describes the chaos of watching Pakistan play as a tamasha, a self-generating energy that begins on the pitch but sweeps up the crowd in its wake to overpower the opposition. It could be a sudden act of skill, a magical bit of fielding or bowling or batting, and the frenzy builds, the opposition starts to crumble, and the team and crowd work in concert to overwhelm them.
Intoxicating, maddening, bewildering: It’s like being on a roving pirate ship where no one quite knows who the captain is.
It’s the sort of head rush that only a small subset of football teams could hope to replicate, teams that can tap into that primal source. It’s never the best side or the most successful, rather it’s usually a collection of individuals who become agents of disorder, able to immolate either themselves or the opposition. Tamasha is fun yet riddled with danger; not all teams can handle it.
Below you’ll find some of the most tamasha sides football has ever seen. Strap in and buckle up; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Man City 2011/12
Picture the scene. It’s the 23rd of October 2011, and a young Asad is off to the Manchester derby. An avid Man United fan, Asad was slightly perturbed by City’s sudden influx of wealth, but at root, he wasn’t too worried. After all, United had been winning trophies and dominating English football since before he was born. The established order had been set, United and then everyone else. It had been the guiding principle of his life.
