The five-step model for Pakistan fans

No team stirs the emotions like Pakistan.

That's speaking as a neutral observer, or even a nominal opponent. There's no international team so capable of regularly provoking sentiment of every shade, from the wildly positive to the crushingly negative.

The path is well-trodden, sometimes in the space of a tour, or even a day's play. Indeed, so familiar are the feelings that I wonder whether one could come up with a universal model for followers of Pakistani cricket. Something along the lines of ‎Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' famous Five Stages of Grief, perhaps: Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance. Maybe this: Awe-Anger-Amusement-Despair-Respect. Awe is the most natural reaction to witnessing the performance of Pakistan's bowlers, in particular. The bowlers have done their best to put the lie to the idea that cricket is a batsman's game - and what a best it has been. In England alone, they have stunned. Wasim and Waqar's surgical strikes in 1992. Shoaib Akhtar's ruthless pace in the 1999 World Cup. Amir and Asif wiping out Australia in 2010.

There can be no quibbling with the fact that Pakistan has produced many of the world's most skilful bowlers. Set against such magnificence, it's probably unsurprising that the batsmen don't always get quite as much credit. Or perhaps I've just preferred to forget the pain dealt out to English bowlers - the plundering by Mohammad Yousuf in 2006, and Inzamam-ul-Haq's reality check after the high of the 2005 Ashes summer, to name but two episodes.

Unfortunately, anger is often lurking in the wings. For the most passionate of fans, a poor performance can raise the hackles. More seriously, off-field controversy rarely seems to be far away. There's no need to rake over the mucky details of the summer of 2010, save to mention the indignation provoked by the Butt-Asif-Amir misdemeanours. Quite apart from compromising the integrity of the game, it smacked of an abuse of hospitality - akin to catching a guest dealing ​drugs ​out of your spare room.

Swift on the heels of anger, though, comes amusement. Actually, what's more likely is that Amusement is idly ball-watching at the non-striker's end, while Anger calls in vain as it charges up the pitch, before Amusement wakes up, falls over its pads and collides with

Anger, with the latter several feet short of its ground. Even in the midst of the 2010 spot-fixing shenanigans, there was still time for humour to raise its clownish head, as PCB chairman Ijaz Butt ludicrously threw back accusations of fixing at the English players - despite the lack of evidence, always handy when bandying such theories around.

Matters on the field have often provided just as much opportunity for hilarity. After blatant time-wasting throughout the day in Karachi in 2000, Moin Khan's butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth plea for bad light, followed by Steve Bucknor's pointed refusal to listen, goes down as one of the funniest umpire-player interactions in the history of the game. Shahid Afridi's chomp on the ball has become such stuff that memes are made on.

At the worst of times, though, there's despair. The 1999 World Cup was my first encounter with the Other Pakistan. Pakistan notably went down against Bangladesh, of course; by any measure, a humiliating defeat at that stage of Bangladesh's development. Yet it had no impact on their progression to the final. The identity of their opponents had not been the only factor in securing my support of Pakistan, but it made their miserable implosion in the final all the more painful.

Would that on-field performances were the least of Pakistan's ailments. They pale into insignificance in the wake of off-field tragedy. Pakistan cricket continues to suffer the fallout of the 2009 terrorist attacks; the lack of Test cricket in Pakistan is a keen loss to the international game, albeit a currently unavoidable one.

Such circumstances ensure that respect for Pakistan is never permanently lost. Indeed, a moment's consideration only enhances it. It may be true that on the surface, of late Pakistan might appear an average team. If one were able to somehow factor in every high and low that has befallen the national team, the mean might be close to the centre - reflected, perhaps, by their upper to mid-table position in the Test rankings, and frequent appearances in tournament knockouts without any silverware.

Yet average is most definitely not the word for Pakistan. To have lost only six Test series out of the 23 played since March 2009 would be remarkable for any team. That such a feat was achieved without being able to play in front of home crowds, in home grounds, makes it astonishing. Indeed, for all the talk of England's aim for No. 1, it's Pakistan that find themselves within touching distance of the top spot - a worthy reward for their years of somewhat overlooked achievement.

Any model, in reality, that attempts to make sense of the wonderful, intoxicating chaos of Pakistani cricket is doomed to failure. Furthermore, a stepwise model like Kübler-Ross' is suspiciously reductive - the feelings arrive in any order and at any time, each as unpredictable as an Abdul Qadir googly.

Awe-Anger-Amusement-Despair-Respect. I'll be very surprised, not to mention disappointed, if at least some of those emotions don't get stirred this summer.