It’s almost always a futile exercise to pursue measures of greatness of sportsmen. Sports, after all, are just games. Sportsmen don’t affect people’s lives the way statesmen do. They can’t take a country from a state of turmoil and thrust them onto a path of excellence, enabling vast swaths of population to put food on their table, or deprive them thereof. Only the very great sportsmen are able to transcend their sport and make a significant impact on the lives of people en mass. Muhammad Ali is arguably the only example for that, and even his greatness is more to do with his political activism than his undeniable boxing prowess.
So why indulge in such vain excesses. Why look for a trait that doesn’t, for all intents and purposes, interest almost three-fourths of the world population. May be the answer lies in what it means to be a successful cricketer, especially in the subcontinent.
India is among the world’s most populous nations. More people travel through India’s railway in a single day than there are citizens in most western countries. Most of those commuters live a normal life. A normal life that is so normal it’s invisible to the other normal dwellers. To stand out from the crowd, one has to live an extraordinary life. An extraordinary life brings with it extraordinary rewards. Rewards that may include a luxurious house, a luxury car, a lot of air travel across the world, and a bank account that doesn’t need balance check on the 25th of every month, and of course, a mind and body that can enjoy those rewards. In India, this goal is reachable either through cinema or cricket. In Pakistan, it’s mostly only cricket!
Sports provide relevance. It persuades a young person that if they try hard enough, they can also become an extraordinary sportsman. It motivates middle-class families to send their children to sports academies so that they may have a shot at that life too. It motivates a lower-class teenage factory worker to sacrifice a day’s earnings to have a go in the open nets, just in case someone spots his talent.
Sports also nurtures escapism. A sportsman’s meaningful life is much shorter than any other professional. So it can be cruel too when someone spends their best years toiling hard in the heat, sacrificing good chances for better ones, only to realize later that the authorities will not pick them for the national side.
Does any of this answers the original question, is Misbah Pakistan’s greatest captain? He’s definitely their most successful captain and their best scorer of centuries after 40 but is he really good enough to be included into Pakistan’s proud list of greats.
The short answer to the question for me is: It remains to be seen.
The long answer, one which Misbah himself would agree with may be: It doesn’t really matter!