(Mukul Kesavan teaches social history at Jamia Milia Islamia and is the author of Men In White)

Watching Pakistan win at the Premadasa on Saturday, I realised that this team isn't a touring cricket side; it's a travelling theatre troupe, a lunatic repertory company. Tickets to Pakistan matches ought to cost double: Afridi's little army creates more drama in a single Power Play than most sides manage in a whole tournament. Imagine an Indian team made up mostly of Sreesanths and you have an inkling of the theatrical potential of this brilliant gang of drama queens.I felt sorry for Sangakkara's Sri Lankans. They're everything a good team ought to be: disciplined, experienced, calm in a crisis and captained by a modern great, a man who talks such a good game that you just know he'll run for high public office some day. And yet, they came unstuck against a team that seemingly does everything wrong. You could make a training film called How To Lose An ODI by making a montage of Pakistani mistakes in Saturday's match: the trouble is, they won.The Sri Lankan chase began well; after a slow start, Tharanga and Dilshan eased past fifty and the commentators, specially Wasim Akram, started disparaging Afridi's hyperactive captaincy style. He wasn't giving Abdur Razzaq the fields the bowler wanted, he was talking to experienced bowlers like Shoaib Akhtar and Umar Gul after every ball, he was, in short, trying to be all eleven players instead of leading them.The television producers obviously agreed because they promptly played a spliced-together sequence of Captain Afridi in action that showed him gesturing, shouting, glowering, despairing, all in his distracted operatic style. At that point, when the Sri Lankans had cruised past seventy at better than five runs an over without having lost a wicket, the message from the commentators was clear: this is not how a team should be led. I could see some clever copy editor rehearsing the next day's headlines: ADHD Sinks Afridi.And it wasn't only Afridi who was writing this script. His wicket keeper Kamran Akmal first charged down the pitch and managed to run out Mohammad Hafeez , then charged down the pitch and had himself stumped. He had done exactly this in the previous match against Kenya , so his claim to being the Cup's Kamikaze King was now undisputed. Forget rushing down the pitch, watching Kamran do nothing is riveting. His eyes stare, his teeth flash, he yips like an Apso on adrenaline.Just to confirm every clichÃ© about Pakistani cricket, you had Shoaib Akhtar on the field. He first turned up in an interview before the match smiling dangerously and declaring he didn't care what people thought about him. I've heard him say this so often that it felt like a flashback. This is a man who's been banned more often than most revolutionary parties. Luckily for us, he's always unbanned, because there's nothing in sport more gloriously weird than Shoaib in action. During the match, Umar Akmal botched a throw while Shoaib was bowling. On cue Shoaib kicked the stumps and so powerful is the presence of this ageing prima donna, that in the deep field poor Umar kicked the air in contrition.I counted at least three dropped catches, two fluffed stumpings and countless missed run-out chances when the Sri Lankans were batting. Everyone contributed: Younis Khan dropped one, Abdur Rahman put down a sitter, this Pakistan team is an equal-opportunity firm.Yet they won. And Captain Afridi was the star of this movie. He hit sixteen runs off six balls, took four wickets with unplayably fast leg-breaks and googlies and, despite the fuss about his leadership style, his desperate, raging need to win was the gravitational force that held his rabble together. He won because along with the clowns in the team, he had two straight men, Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq, who ignored the madness around then and methodically built the partnership than won Pakistan the match. This being Pakistan, Misbah-ul-Haq is a Pathan hero straight from Central Casting: he's so splendidly hook-nosed that even enclosed in his helmet he looks like a hawk.When they're bad, Pakistani teams are awful. Their recent history of factional discord, divided dressing rooms, dishonest players and assorted craziness has sometimes made them dysfunctional. But there's no team in cricket that has more electricity about it. Even its profligacy, the extravagance with which it wastes its prodigious gifts, is a spectacle that's worth the price of a ticket. I wouldn't bet on the Pakistanis, but there's an outside chance that they could steal this thing because even when they play like the Keystone Cops, the script in their heads is always Ocean's Eleven.