Shafique rips up the rule book with World Cup century

Hey, you.

Yes, you.

Dumb expression on your face.

You.

Clicked on an article that purported to analyse Pakistan's run chase of 345 over Sri Lanka, absolutely demolishing their record for best World Cup run chase.

Idiot.

This is beating their best chase 31 years ago when they scored 264 for 6 against New Zealand in a semi-final. They then won that tournament, having skidded hilariously into the semis.

With this chase, Pakistan have also now also recorded the highest successful pursuit in any World Cup, ever, beating Ireland's 329 for 7 against England in 2011.

The analysis is that Abdullah Shafique set the whole thing up with his 113 off 103 balls. The same Shafique that was playing his first World Cup innings ever. More crazily, the same Shafique who was playing his ninth List A match ever.

Shafique, the guy that opens the batting in Tests, and has a strike rate of 44.13 after 26 innings, and who before this innings, had one century in any kind of senior white-ball cricket. White-ball cricket. Who needs specialist training in that trash? Just throw Test batters into the ring.

What? Other teams are doing the opposite? They are blooding players in T20 cricket, then introducing them in ODIs and Tests. They are hoping to inject the kind of vitality frequently seen in the shortest format into the longer ones, partly because audiences apparently now demand higher-octane entertainment, but also because outstanding T20 players tend to disrupt the flow of longer-format cricket in ways that oppositions find hard to respond to?

That's cute.

But this is Pakistan cricket.

That's not the way things work here.

The way things work here is that Test batters replace batters such as Fakhar Zaman (who has played a leading role in previous ODI tournament triumphs), and immediately seem as if a World Cup hundred was their birthright. Whose hitting is suddenly as clean as that of any T20 starboy, and whose setting up of a massive ODI chase is so smooth it feels like he's done it at least 50 times before.

This is only to laud one of Pakistan's centurions, because there was another, and his own innings was no less fun. Mohammad Rizwan is a much-better seasoned ODI cricketer than Shafique, but still, introduced drama into the chase.

Rizwan did this by "suffering" cramps through the second half of his innings. He seemed seriously incapacitated when he was not required to move quickly. But when bowlers were coming at him at 145 kph, or he was attempting a rapid second run into the outfield, suddenly his calves, hamstrings, quads, and lumbar spine snapped into miraculous action. Having slowed the game down, Rizwan finished with 131 not out off 121 balls.

Soon after coming off the field, he said to the broadcaster: "Sometimes it's cramp, sometimes it's acting". Then he laughed. As if it was a normal thing to admit to.

There is the high-flying tendency to resist this vision of the Pakistan side as crazy. But is this really less intellectually acceptable? Because we perhaps have enough data that suggests this team is impervious to analysis. And at some point, or at least until there is more data on the data, the rational thing is to give in to the madness.

A batter playing his ninth List A match setting up a record World Cup chase should make you doubt everything you hold dear. A batter basically milking an injury through half his innings and then sort of winkingly acknowledging it soon after that innings has brought his team victory should make you wonder if all of life is a massive prank.

For what is elite sport without all this? An endless treadmill of processes, hard work, planning, drills, preparation, hard work, execution, and preparation. Not dull exactly. There is a #riseandgrind appeal to all of that, if this is what you're into.

But if that is what you're into, then perhaps you are not into this particular narrative on Pakistan - that for all our efforts to explain everything about the sporting world, there are still things that poke their tongue at reason.

And that you, yes you, dumb expression on your face, are no closer to working out what makes Pakistan tick at the molecular level. And yet, perhaps, you find your experience of life perversely enhanced by their instability.