Despite all the material progress mankind has made, our gullibility when it comes to superstition never ceases to amaze me. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the Roman ruler famously ignores the warning to “beware the Ides of March”, and is assassinated. But before his death, ‘strange portents’ are seen in the sky. However, as Cassius tells his friend Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

This is a lesson many politicians have ignored over the ages. Nancy Reagan, President Ronald Reagan’s wife, was well known for consulting astrologers and mediums. As she wielded considerable influence on her husband, observers speculated on the impact of astrological predictions on his decision-making.

Closer to home, Benazir Bhutto was prone to consult peers and faqirs, and Nawaz Sharif is known to visit shrines in an effort to read the future. Here in Sri Lanka, they take superstition to another level. Few decisions are made without consulting astronomers who have a complex system of foretelling the future.

So seriously do Sri Lankans take their soothsayers that last June, a famous seer was arrested for predicting that President Mahinda Rajapakse would soon be out of power. Chandrasiri Bandara made this prediction at the end of the long-running civil war that saw Rajapakse triumph over the LTTE, and was at the height of his popularity. At that point, nobody could have even thought it remotely possible that the President could be challenged: after all, his term had two years to run, and there seemed nobody on the horizon to challenge him. But a belief in the power of mysterious, unknown forces can do strange things to the judgment of even the most seasoned of politicians. Soon after the military victory, his favourite soothsayers apparently told the President that his army chief’s stars were headed towards a very favourable conjunction, and he should therefore beware of General Sanath Fonseka’s ambitions. Heeding this advice, Rajapakse kicked the general upstairs into the largely ceremonial post of services chief. Snubbed over this slight after his victory over the Tamil Tigers, Fonseka resigned, and agreed to become the combined opposition’s candidate for the Presidency.

Even the decision to go to the polls two years before his term had ended was partly influenced by the stars, as was the election date. Whether this decision will come back to haunt him will be plain by the time you read this. As I write, Sri Lankans are voting in the most important election in their history. The stakes could not be higher. The fact that over 900 incidents of election-related violence have been reported thus far in which four people have died and scores injured, is an indication of the deep divisions the campaign has exposed. I went to a Fonseka rally the other day, and although I did not understand a word he said, I was not impressed by his oratorical style. He had all the fire and passion of a CEO delivering the company’s balance sheet to his board. Nevertheless, he has captured the imagination of millions who seem to be saying: “Anybody but Rajapakse.”

This morning, I went around a few polling stations, and found them almost deserted. Apparently, voters had cast their ballots early, and the town seemed to have more soldiers and cops than citizens. In Jaffna, the old capital of the Tamil Tigers, a series of bomb explosions early this morning have kept turnout there low. Ironically, the Tamils suddenly find themselves in the kingmaker’s role. With the majority Sinhala vote being split between the two claimants to the mantle of war hero, the Tamils and Muslims, who together make up around a quarter of the island’s population, could end up determining the outcome of the election.

While I have been following the election campaign closely, another contest I have been watching with frustration and annoyance is the Pakistani team’s tour of New Zealand and Australia. At the best of times, following our cricket team’s fortunes is an exercise in masochism. Each time you think our ‘baayz’ (to quote Inzi) have hit rock bottom, they surprise you and show they have a long way to go before they actually reach the very lowest level. Defeat I can live with; after all, there has to be a loser in every game. But why, oh why, does it have to be our team every time?

There are other teams that are below us in the rankings. I suppose Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are lurking there somewhere, waiting to overtake us soon. But what is so infuriating about Mohammed Yousuf and his squad is that they seem to have lost their fighting spirit and self-belief. Whenever they fall behind – something they do with monotonous regularity – their body language suggests they have already given up. There is seldom a hint of a fight-back or a rearguard action.

Yousuf’s captaincy has been truly pathetic to behold. Time after time, he has squandered a strong position to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. His own batting has steadily deteriorated, and his weakness as a captain was woefully exposed when for several days, Kamran Akmal, the man who lost us the second test against Australia through his abysmal wicket-keeping, defied the decision to drop him. This made our team the butt of Aussie humour, and the laughing stock of the cricketing world.

However, after the stumps have been drawn, and the passion of the moment drained, I can be more objective. After all, our team is the reflection of our national ethos, no more and no less. Pakistan, too, suffers from mediocre leadership and an inability to put in the hard grind needed for success. We, too, look for excuses for our shortcomings and failures.

Both Javed Miandad and Mohammed Yousuf have blamed the T20 format for the deterioration in our Test team. But other countries play both types of the game without seeming to suffer any ill-effects. When his team suffered a 0-3 clean sweep of the Test series, Yousuf was quick to praise the Aussies as the ‘best team in the world’ instead of accepting that he and his squad would have been hard pressed to beat a club team.

For years, people have been complaining about the rotten structure of our cricketing organization, just as they have of the breakdown of virtually every national institution. Those close to our cricket team say it has come under heavy Tablighi influence with the appointment of Yousuf as the captain. Perhaps the fault really is in our stars…