Currently serving again in South Asia as a counterterrorism program advisor, Ted Craig retired from the U.S. Foreign Service after twenty-nine years and two tours in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second as political counselor. He also served three tours in Latin America and held policy jobs related to peace and security, environmental diplomacy, and human rights. His most recent book Pakistan and American Diplomacy: Insights from 9/11 to the Afghanistan Endgame was published by Potomac Books in April.

Pakistan and American Diplomacy offers an insightful, fast-moving tour through Pakistan-U.S. relations, from 9/11 to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as told from the perspective of a former U.S. diplomat who served twice in Pakistan. Ted Craig frames his narrative around the 2019 Cricket World Cup, a contest that saw Pakistan square off against key neighbors and cricketing powers Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh, and its former colonial ruler, Britain.

Prologue 

Resetting the Relationship 

Mohammad Amir was just twenty-five years old when his life arc passed to redemption. Seven years before, a green eighteen-year-old, he had stepped into humiliation and guilt, the youngest of three Pakistani cricket players caught cheating in a British tabloid sting. The promising bowler (a “pitcher” in baseball parlance), in 2010 already a star on the national team and playing a Pakistan-England test in London, bowled two “no balls” at precisely the point in the match promised by a fixer to a bookie. The fixer was a British-Pakistani sports agent, Mazhar Majeed, enjoying far too much access to the Pakistan national team; the “bookie” was really a journalist. Majeed’s promises and his comically villainous counting-out of 150,000 British pounds were recorded on video. Amir, not a bowler prone to delivering “no balls,” stepped wildly across the delivery line in the third over, twice committing his choreographed fouls.

Amir would join the other two indicted players—Mohammad Asif and team captain Salman Butt—in asserting their innocence before a tribunal of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2011. They did not persuade. All three received playing bans, Amir’s the shortest at five years. Later that year Amir confessed when facing criminal charges in a British courtroom. He broke ranks with the other two defendants and admitted his guilt. He insisted he had taken no money but confessed to purposefully stepping across the line. He served three months in jail.

This spot-fixing scandal was just the latest dreary episode tainting the sport. Though the crimes in this case were just three no balls, hardly enough to swing a match, Majeed described the poor deliveries as proof that he could engineer future match-changing results. In his videotaped braggadocio, he suggested that an epic Pakistani collapse against Australia in a January 2010 test match played in Sydney owed to such corruption. Defensive after years of scandals in the sport worldwide, players and commentators roundly condemned the guilty Pakistanis.

Nonetheless, Amir had moved from risible claims of innocence to something like atonement. He asked for forgiveness. He would put in the work over the next five years to stay in shape, coming back to cricket in 2016. He had all the ingredients for popular rehabilitation— humble and rural roots, youth at the time of his crime, a confession, good looks, and soon enough a stable marriage and a child. As important, he possessed the skills that Pakistani fans elevate above all others. He was an accomplished left-armed fast bowler.

Most Pakistanis welcomed Amir’s return. Foreign fans were less forgiving. Some taunted him on his return to play in England in 2016, and he could expect sharp treatment as Pakistan prepared to contest the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy in England and Wales.

Conducted under the same One Day International (ODI) rules that govern the World Cup of Cricket, the Champions Trophy was then the sport’s second most important international competition, conducted quadrennially and two years apart from the World Cups. The Trophy tournament had a smaller field, just eight teams in 2017, the best eight in the world. In its first match, Pakistan looked well outside the top tier.

Opening group play, Pakistan drew the defending champion and tournament favorite: India. India is Pakistan’s greatest adversary in geopolitics, its enemy-neighbor, an opponent in three wars and several skirmishes fought in just seventy years of nationhood. India-Pakistan is also a great cricket rivalry, albeit one marred by inconclusive results in the longer multiday “test” format, where teams can play for a tie rather than risk a loss. India-Pakistan matches draw massive television audiences, consistently among the world’s largest for sporting events. When contested in the United Kingdom, the matches draw sold-out crowds from the large diaspora communities of both countries.

The much-anticipated June 4 meetup proved a disappointment to fans of competitive matches. Pakistan lost by 124 runs; in ODI cricket the margin was a rout. Bowling against the strong Indian batsmen, Mohammad Amir gave a creditable performance. He took no wickets (outs, in baseball) but kept the Indians from scoring much. His bowling teammates, however, gave away too many runs, and Pakistani batting fell short.

Pakistan recovered from the dispiriting defeat against India with a win over South Africa. In the final match of group play, against Sri Lanka, Amir took a key pair of wickets and made crucial runs with the bat. Pakistan won the match easily, advancing to a semifinal match against England at Cardiff.

If India was Pakistan’s greatest rival in all things existential, England was its more consistent rival in cricket. Where India and Pakistan often let years pass without playing due to tensions and conflict, England and Pakistan played regularly. The two countries now have a deep and edgy cricket history to complement the weight of their colonial past. Results between the two sides are balanced. England’s team was coming into form in 2017, however, and it was a favorite.

Amir, out for injury, did not play against England, but Pakistan’s other bowling talent did fine, limiting England to just 211 runs. England’s run rate of 4.23 for every over (six balls) was one of its lowest ever in an ODI contest. Pakistan then pursued the modest 211-run target methodically, using thirty-seven of fifty allotted overs to surpass the total and take the match. On the other side of the bracket, India steadily outplayed Bangladesh to claim a nine-wicket win of its own.

The Trophy final was played at the historic Oval in London, contingents of boisterous Indian and Pakistani fans filling the stands. India was the heavy favorite, but Pakistan’s batting emerged to immediately tilt the match.

Pakistan raced out to 338 runs, with only four wickets surrendered. Fakhar Zaman, after a long slog in domestic Pakistani cricket, emerged as a star with 114 runs scored on 106 balls. (The following year, Zaman would become the first Pakistani to score a “double century,” 200 runs, in an ODI match.)

In their turn at bat, the Indian batting order was now looking at a difficult and distant target. The Indian batsmen took risks to score more runs, making themselves vulnerable to the Pakistani bowlers. Still, Amir deserves credit for what followed. In a wink, he dismissed India’s best three batters. He took Rohit Sharma “leg before wicket” (lbw) after just three balls, for “a duck” (no runs scored). Amir then induced poor shots from both Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dawan (the “batsman of the series”), taking two more critical wickets.

From that point in the match, the result was a given, and after 30.4 overs, Pakistan had bowled out India for only 158 runs. Pakistan’s 180-run win was the largest ever in an ICC ODI tournament final.

The win put Pakistan briefly atop the cricketing world, with an eye to the World Cup competition coming in 2019. Mohammad Amir became a hero, the author of a series of balls that would be replayed and remembered for years. As his career began to wobble toward retirement in 2020, many lamented the years lost between 2010 and 2016, when the young pace bowler might well have anchored other epic wins for Pakistan.

Team sport is at best a dodgy metaphor for interstate relations, but Pakistan’s briefly successful formula for a return to the top of cricket in 2017 paralleled questions I asked myself as I returned to Pakistan in 2018. Was there a magical diplomatic outcome that could redeem America’s necessary exit from Afghanistan? Could Pakistan find a way back from decades of colluding with Islamist militancy? And could the United States and Pakistan chart a successful relationship in the post-Afghanistan dispensation?