When Salman Butt came into the Pakistan team in 2003, he seemed to be the answer to a prayer. Saeed Anwar, a gifted left-handed opener with the ability to adapt to any surface, had played his last game six months earlier and many wondered if the void would ever be filled. Butt made 12 and 37 in his debut Test against Bangladesh, but once he established himself a year later the accolades came quickly.
After starting his one-day career with a two-ball duck at the Rose Bowl during the 2004 Champions Trophy, Butt faced India, the eternal rival, for the first time a couple of months later. It was a showpiece occasion, the Board of Control for Cricket in India celebrating its Platinum Jubilee in front of a packed Eden Gardens.
"Just 20 years old and playing only his sixth one-day international, Butt showed none of the inexperience or immaturity that might have been expected from someone so raw," said Cricinfo's report of the game. "Playing in front of 90,000 spectators, most of them rooting for the opposition, he put in a completely nerveless display."
A couple of months after that unbeaten 108, he made a superb opening-day hundred in the New Year Test in Sydney, against an attack of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill. Classy strokes aside, what really caught the eye was the composure he showed against heavyweights who were not shy of letting slip a verbal or two.
Away from the pitch too, he left a good impression. Unlike many of his team‑mates, who had to rely on translators to make themselves understood to an English-speaking audience, Butt was fairly eloquent, a legacy of an education at the prestigious Beaconhouse School in Lahore. In an interview with the Guardian last year he sounded dignified and almost ambassadorial, explaining how cricket could heal the wounds caused by Pakistan's natural disasters and political turmoil. "These are dark days, not just for the cricket side but for Pakistan," he said. "The air crash happens, the flood comes, the earthquakes before and all sorts of other things happening. It feels really bad. People are concerned about their young ones. But cricket is something that can lift people, lift their moods and cheer them up."
It was under an Englishman, the late Bob Woolmer, that Butt made significant strides as a player, and he was one of the few who enthusiastically bought into the coach's bonding exercises.
One of them was to make the players watch Remember the Titans, which had Denzel Washington starring as a black American football coach in America's racially volatile deep south in the 1960s. John Wright had taken the Indians to see it before they ended Steve Waugh's "final frontier" dreams in 2001, and in a subsequent interview Butt spoke of its impact. "I remember after watching the film, Woolmer's first lesson to the boys was about the true meaning of the word 'team'. He said T stood for together, E for each, A for achievements and M for more."
England got their first glimpse of his potential when the Ashes-winning side of 2005 journeyed to Multan. Butt followed up a solid 74 with a dogged 122 that anchored the second innings. The Wisden Almanack wrote: "Butt showed great self-knowledge in his shot selection, working the ball into gaps and minimising risk against the persistent probing of Flintoff and Hoggard." He was man of the match as Pakistan defended 198.
In some ways, that was as good as it got. He would have to wait more than four years for his third and final Test hundred, in Hobart, and the star turns in one-day internationals were usually restricted to games against Asian opposition. Many fans loved him though, because he saved his best for India, making five of his eight one-day hundreds against them.
Bowlers picked up on a weakness against the full swinging ball and a tendency to waft lazily outside off‑stump, but he was the man the selectors turned to last year when Shahid Afridi's Test comeback lasted the duration of the Lord's match against Australia. Butt made 92 in that game and in his first assignment as leader he led the team to a famous victory at Headingley.
His awareness of the bigger picture impressed many. "This was a wonderful experience and a wonderful achievement," he said after the win. "We would like to dedicate this victory to people in Pakistan, who would like to watch us play. Hopefully we will back soon playing in Pakistan." In the Observer Vic Marks wrote: "He may have much to learn, but, here, his composure on his debut as captain was striking."
On the popular PakPassion website a supporter wrote of the day he had watched a 14-year-old make 170-odd in a school game. "We had no doubt that one day this guy would represent Pakistan. Today when I see him in court and a possibility of jail, that young boy again comes to my mind. I still can't believe someone like Butt got involved in this mess."
"Hopes, dreams, ambitions have ended in disgrace in a London courtroom," tweeted Kamran Abbasi, one of the most perceptive writers on Pakistan cricket. "They [Butt and Asif] were children once. I bet they didn't dream about going to jail for spot-fixing."
In its analysis piece of the Kolkata game that made him a household name in Pakistan, Cricinfo asked the question: "Is he yet another shooting star or will he make a place for himself in the firmament?"
We know the answer now.
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