Cricket Zeroes: Shoaib Malik

Last week saw the birth of our 'Heroes & Zeroes' feature, where each weekend we will offer up a cricketing hero on the Saturday and a zero on the Sunday. David Gower and Chris Lewis were the first to star and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out which one was the hero!

This week's Sunday zero is Mr Machiavelli himself, Shoaib Malik.

Zero 2: Shoaib Malik (31 tests, 1600 runs @34.78, HS 148, 21 wickets at 60.52 - as at 5th Aug 2010)

Currently exhibiting his talents in the 2nd test at Edgbaston, Malik seems a particularly unsavoury character if reports emanating from Pakistan - especially over the last 18 months - are to be believed.

Here are a few reasons why Malik is a Reverse Sweep zero:

1. The king of conspiracy - It would seem that Malik was the leader of the group of players who undermined Younis Khan's and Mohammad Yousuf's stints as Pakistan captain. We are not keen on turncoats and snipers here at the Reverse Sweep.
2. Hardly captain material - Malik's ambition seems to be to regain the captaincy he briefly held in 2007. But given his record and the fact that he is in and out of the Pakistan side like a yo-yo, we think that Malik should concentrate on trying to retain his place and leave the captaincy to his betters.
3. An average player - Although he can be effective with the bat in limited overs cricket, Malik's record in test cricket hardly inspires confidence. That would be fine except Malik obviously sees himself as a cross between Javed Miandad and Mushtaq Ahmed, which he clearly isn't on either count.
4. Match fixing & under-performance - Back in 2005, Malik was banned for one test for admitting to deliberately losing a domestic Twenty 20 match. That is cheating in our book, and we can't abide cheats and match-fixers.
5. Phone sex - Anyone that gets married over the telephone to someone they have only met on the internet and is then surprised that they turn out not to be as drop dead gorgeous as they said they were is probably a bit delusional, and certainly a bit stupid. This was the tale of Malik and his first wife.