If there was some kind of documentary proof of being a supporter of Pakistan cricket, I would have torn mine up in disgust on the 6th day of January, 2010, much in the manner that put-upon football fans tear up their season tickets in a final gesture that says “To hell with you; you shall make my life a misery no more!”
It would have lived through much, battered and worn from being oft-displayed, and carried near to the heart. It would have been stained irrevocably in December 2000, when the test team went out on the field of the National Stadium with no intention of even trying to win, and lost ignominiously in semidarkness to an England side despite some of the most blatant time wasting ever witnessed on a sporting field. Although lack of subtlety has not been our strong suit as a nation (have a watch of any Punjabi film song on cable for proof), there are limits, really.
It would have been frayed and dented in 2002, when a Pakistan team not made up entirely of mugs could not post an aggregate total of more than 120 over two test innings in a ‘home’ game held somewhere in the Middle East. And although Multan in 2004 would have come close as one of the most abject all round performances handed Sehwag his maiden treble hundred and Saqlain his Test P-45, but all of these would have paled in comparison to what this cricket fan has had to live through these past few days.
It would have lived through much, battered and worn from being oft-displayed, and carried near to the heart. It would have been stained irrevocably in December 2000, when the test team went out on the field of the National Stadium with no intention of even trying to win, and lost ignominiously in semidarkness to an England side despite some of the most blatant time wasting ever witnessed on a sporting field. Although lack of subtlety has not been our strong suit as a nation (have a watch of any Punjabi film song on cable for proof), there are limits, really.
It would have been frayed and dented in 2002, when a Pakistan team not made up entirely of mugs could not post an aggregate total of more than 120 over two test innings in a ‘home’ game held somewhere in the Middle East. And although Multan in 2004 would have come close as one of the most abject all round performances handed Sehwag his maiden treble hundred and Saqlain his Test P-45, but all of these would have paled in comparison to what this cricket fan has had to live through these past few days.
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| Although this is the Multan stadium, thankfully I wasn't there for the drubbing aginst India. This is from the England tour in 2005. |
There is probably nothing crueller than to be given hope only to have it snatched away again. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that this hope is forlorn, that your team is standing at 10 losses in 10 tests played, and were odds-on to finish the series with a 0-12 record, hope (that vindictive harpy) still rears her ugly head. Again and again this team has contrived to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but this was the last straw.
I am tired of caring. All it has brought is heartbreak and disappointment. I guess I am the only one who thinks that we can, if we get our act together, win without biting great gobs of leather out of the ball, or doing a jig on the pitch, or indeed that anyone guilty of one of those offenses, let alone both, should be summarily stripped of the captaincy for life.
Newsflash mate: your offense was not one of off-field shenanigans but on-field cheating. Compare yourself not to Tiger, but to Ben Johnson. But why would you, when yours dandruff-free head has had the captain’s crown placed upon it again? Taint it with impunity; you are not the first, and most probably not the last either.
Is this faith in the possibility of odds being overturned on the playing field unreasonable for a nation at the bottom end of pretty much all KPIs of nationhood, borne of a fateful morning nearly two decades ago when a barrel-chested captain walked on-field for a toss with a cornered tiger emblazoned on his chest? I will disagree with my mate Silas and submit that the world is replete with sporting teams from nations as troubled as ours who have gone on to perform amazing feats without any illegal assistance. Although his analogy of Pakistani cricketers being less like the cornered tigers we wish they were, and more like the petulant children they are, seems increasingly apt.
I realise that I am probably in a rapidly shrinking minority of Pakistanis, whose great triumphs and greater disappointments are linked to the longer (or should I now say longest?) version of the game. The increasing popularity of the circus freakshow as sport that is twenty over cricket is, to me, yet another example of the rot that has set into civiliszation as we seek instant gratification instead of a sustained experience.
I have sat on this piece too long – after all, a declaration of this magnitude (and I am not being facetious here, I am part of an entire generation that is defined by a single swing of Miandad’s bat in Sharjah) in the national media is not something one can back ingloriously away from easily. Hence I started writing this piece in January, and have been sitting on it ever since, hoping to consign it to the Recycle Bin only for some fresh fiasco to revive my bile and resurrect this piece.
And so we stand here, a month away from the annual world championship of a competition that sees us being less-than-abject simply because there is a much greater element of chance involved, and the biggest piece of cricket news is about the betrothal of a banned ex-captain (we have a few of those knocking about, don’t we?) to a tennis player from across the Wagah, an item that may well be shown up as an early April Fool’s prank by the time this is published (if I can drum up the guts to submit this piece, that is). No news of the team, the coaching staff, or the preparations. Still, since every cloud must have a silver lining, we stand the outside chance of gaining a world top 50 tennis player on account of dual nationality. Here’s hoping they set up residence in Sharjah, for old times’ sake.
I give up, I really do. I will not take any time off in the summer to watch the England tests, catching up on my reading instead. I will purge Cricinfo from my ‘Favourites’ folder. I will give my replica shirt to charity. I will not allow former test cricketers who cry wolf at every loss, claiming each match lost by Pakistan to be a fix, to get under my skin any more. I will put my picture of a few friends at Lord’s, holding up the Pakistan flag despite a looming innings defeat, deep in a drawer, for even after all they’ve put me through I cannot bear to destroy it.
I am tired of caring. All it has brought is heartbreak and disappointment. I guess I am the only one who thinks that we can, if we get our act together, win without biting great gobs of leather out of the ball, or doing a jig on the pitch, or indeed that anyone guilty of one of those offenses, let alone both, should be summarily stripped of the captaincy for life.
Newsflash mate: your offense was not one of off-field shenanigans but on-field cheating. Compare yourself not to Tiger, but to Ben Johnson. But why would you, when yours dandruff-free head has had the captain’s crown placed upon it again? Taint it with impunity; you are not the first, and most probably not the last either.
Is this faith in the possibility of odds being overturned on the playing field unreasonable for a nation at the bottom end of pretty much all KPIs of nationhood, borne of a fateful morning nearly two decades ago when a barrel-chested captain walked on-field for a toss with a cornered tiger emblazoned on his chest? I will disagree with my mate Silas and submit that the world is replete with sporting teams from nations as troubled as ours who have gone on to perform amazing feats without any illegal assistance. Although his analogy of Pakistani cricketers being less like the cornered tigers we wish they were, and more like the petulant children they are, seems increasingly apt.
I realise that I am probably in a rapidly shrinking minority of Pakistanis, whose great triumphs and greater disappointments are linked to the longer (or should I now say longest?) version of the game. The increasing popularity of the circus freakshow as sport that is twenty over cricket is, to me, yet another example of the rot that has set into civiliszation as we seek instant gratification instead of a sustained experience.
I have sat on this piece too long – after all, a declaration of this magnitude (and I am not being facetious here, I am part of an entire generation that is defined by a single swing of Miandad’s bat in Sharjah) in the national media is not something one can back ingloriously away from easily. Hence I started writing this piece in January, and have been sitting on it ever since, hoping to consign it to the Recycle Bin only for some fresh fiasco to revive my bile and resurrect this piece.
And so we stand here, a month away from the annual world championship of a competition that sees us being less-than-abject simply because there is a much greater element of chance involved, and the biggest piece of cricket news is about the betrothal of a banned ex-captain (we have a few of those knocking about, don’t we?) to a tennis player from across the Wagah, an item that may well be shown up as an early April Fool’s prank by the time this is published (if I can drum up the guts to submit this piece, that is). No news of the team, the coaching staff, or the preparations. Still, since every cloud must have a silver lining, we stand the outside chance of gaining a world top 50 tennis player on account of dual nationality. Here’s hoping they set up residence in Sharjah, for old times’ sake.
I give up, I really do. I will not take any time off in the summer to watch the England tests, catching up on my reading instead. I will purge Cricinfo from my ‘Favourites’ folder. I will give my replica shirt to charity. I will not allow former test cricketers who cry wolf at every loss, claiming each match lost by Pakistan to be a fix, to get under my skin any more. I will put my picture of a few friends at Lord’s, holding up the Pakistan flag despite a looming innings defeat, deep in a drawer, for even after all they’ve put me through I cannot bear to destroy it.
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| Lords, 2001. Nothing like a pair at Lords from Wajahatullah Wasti to put a smile on your face, regardless of whether you are holding the flag right side up or not. |
This is it. I resign. I well and truly do.
Cards on the table time:
Originally written between Jan and April 2010, some months before the spot-fixing scandal hit the airwaves.
I never submitted this one for publication, even throughout the Mazhar Majeed fiasco, even when Salman Butt, while serving out his ban, was hired as a pundit by a local TV channel, even when every loss was declaimed as a fix by Sarfaraz Nawaz and Co, and despite the deplorable conduct of one Mr E. Butt. I have sat it on it through the dark days, and summarily failed to follow through on any of my commitments, spectacularly so.
Why, then, have I not ritually burned this piece, and why indeed am I choosing to put it up for public ridicule now? For clearly I didn’t mean any of the threats that I made, and not only do I continue to support the national cricket team in letter and spirit, but I really don’t see it ever ending. After all, if my loyalty has lived through the tribulations of the past two years, you have to admit it seems to be pretty much bomb proof.
I think a part of not publishing this earlier was the knowledge, somewhere in my heart, that I was never likely to follow through with this threat. So what has changed? I guess the reason is that I have come to terms with the fact that, no matter what they do to me, I will still be there for them, and this is my coming out party. When you spend four days turning the colour of a freshly cooked lobster in the presence of the Barmy Army, you learn certain things about yourself.
This is it. I resign. I well and truly do.
Cards on the table time:
Originally written between Jan and April 2010, some months before the spot-fixing scandal hit the airwaves.
I never submitted this one for publication, even throughout the Mazhar Majeed fiasco, even when Salman Butt, while serving out his ban, was hired as a pundit by a local TV channel, even when every loss was declaimed as a fix by Sarfaraz Nawaz and Co, and despite the deplorable conduct of one Mr E. Butt. I have sat it on it through the dark days, and summarily failed to follow through on any of my commitments, spectacularly so.
Why, then, have I not ritually burned this piece, and why indeed am I choosing to put it up for public ridicule now? For clearly I didn’t mean any of the threats that I made, and not only do I continue to support the national cricket team in letter and spirit, but I really don’t see it ever ending. After all, if my loyalty has lived through the tribulations of the past two years, you have to admit it seems to be pretty much bomb proof.
I think a part of not publishing this earlier was the knowledge, somewhere in my heart, that I was never likely to follow through with this threat. So what has changed? I guess the reason is that I have come to terms with the fact that, no matter what they do to me, I will still be there for them, and this is my coming out party. When you spend four days turning the colour of a freshly cooked lobster in the presence of the Barmy Army, you learn certain things about yourself.
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| Pakistan vs England, Third test,Dubai Like a renewal of the vows |
Pakistan cricket has tried my patience again and again. I have come damn close to pulling the plug on this relationship more than once. But here I still remain. For the fact of the matter is that while the bad days are bad indeed, the good days are so damn good that they more than make up for the bad.
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