Masood Hasan

You may recall the story about a man who wandered into a Jinn’s lair. Seeing the man, the Jinn laughed happily and then started weeping profusely. The perplexed intruder asked the Jinn why he had laughed and then cried. The Jinn replied, “I laughed because I was so happy to see a man after such a long, long time.” “But,” persisted the man, “why cry?” The Jinn sighed, “Because I am going to eat you.”

This is the quandary in which ordinary citizens find themselves every day, as they open newspapers and get slapped with more bad news. Consider for a moment.

The former head of Lahore’s Bar Association (no, it is not a drinking body), is implicated in the bizarre torture-murder of a 12-year-old Christian maidservant. The police, bless their black hearts, refuse to register an FIR, and all kinds of accusations, insults, threats begin to fly around. Conflicting claims pour in, confounding the situation. The wretched Christians, downtrodden and miserable as they are, long having been a dispensable minority, come out on the streets. The media has a field day, but pretty much nothing happens, except that things getting murkier and murkier.

The state of sordid affairs leads a Lahore observer to quip that “although the white in the Pakistani flag does represent the minorities, let us not forget that it is the same white which is shafted by the flag post.” Hardly has the maid servant drama begun to subside when, lo and behold! we have Punjab’s exalted Chief Secretary, a man more powerful than you can imagine, who makes a clean getaway from a hit-and-run case. His car, over-speeding (by some accounts) knocks down an elderly gentleman who dies for lack of timely medical aid. The man is a retired colonel and his family and the people rise up in anger and frustration.

That the Chief Secretary never stops, that he boards another car from his considerable entourage and carries on nonchalantly, that he does not call the police, does not hand over his driver and does not allow the registration of an FIR (the police refuse to register one, as in the maid’s case) – these are facts already known to all. What the CS or the former Bar Association head should have done is known to the dumbest ass in Lahore, but it did not happen. The province’s VIPs descend on both homes, utter pious prayers, look solemn, croak out promises of “justice will be done,” make other appropriate noises, announce/dispense cash and are gone at speeds that would impress UK’s Lewis Hamilton, sirens wailing and traffic frozen. Another day at the office.

And then there is Shahid Afridi or, to get it correctly, Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi, him of the team of baboons chattering and jumping about as the Aussies systematically roasted them over large bonfires lit by the baboons themselves. Till mid-Jan this year, the man has played 293 ODIs 26 tests, 57 Twenty20s, is almost 30, if he is to be believed. Yet, in the 5th ODI, in the tense 46th over, he starts to tamper the ball, gnawing at it like baboons do. “I was smelling it,” he says later. Oh please, Mr Afridi. He chews at the seam in the middle of a packed Perth ground with dozens of cameras capturing every moment in super slow-mo.

The terrible cricketing crime is seen by millions on TV. When confronted, as he was going to be, the Sahibzada apologises and says he was tampering the ball so that Pakistan could win the face-saving 5th ODI – “just one match,” he pleads to Geo. Hello? “All teams do it,” the genius next announces. That, of course, makes it right in Afridi’s thin book of rules.

He is banned by the ICC under the rules governing this series for the next two matches and is also unable to take part in a later match vs. England in Dubai. But this is the ICC, not the PCB.

Mr Intikhab Alam, who has to be hoisted up the team bus and gingerly unloaded on arrival by willing hands, condemns the action. And in the same breath, being the eternal compromise man that he has always been, declares astonishingly that he “feels sorry” for Afridi. Sorry? What for? Afridi is a habitual offender. Anyone recall the pitch tampering the Sahibzada indulged in to “help” his side’s bowlers? Intikhab Alam should have fined Afridi on the spot or got the somnolent PCB to do the needful and send him home in disgrace.

Yet, like the former Bar chief and the now-on-forced-leave Chief Secretary, he does not do the right thing, the correct thing, the only thing an honourable man, whatever the consequences, whatever the odds, should do. He compromises and lets time, the great Pakistani opiate, help him get over this little wobble. Escape Plan No. 54. Back home it merely disillusions further the battered, robbed and assaulted ordinary people of Pakistan who know only too well that nothing really ever changes.

In Karachi, only the chief selector, the only half-way honourable man in a pen populated by vermin and scumbags, resigns, citing our disgraceful performance. The PCB head — who has done everything wrong and nothing right, broken rules and taken terrible decisions, or none at all, who is shamed daily by the media, cricket’s disillusioned fans, the entire Senate and the National Assembly which summons him every five minutes and lambastes him – he takes all this punishing blows and hangs on for dear life.

What is in this chair that mesmerises otherwise halfway-decent folk who think nothing of abandoning established rules of conduct, hallowed by time and tradition, as long as they stay put? Even Pervez Musharraf, not much of a thinker, wondered why everyone was forever chussing up to him (as we said at school) and begging him to be appointed head honcho of the PCB? As a body the PCB should have resigned at the end of the Tests, not even waited for the humiliation of the 5-0 ODI whitewash that all of us saw coming. After all, how further badly would Pakistan have fared without the PCB at its back?

But to get back to our Jinn, although in its present state, the Pakistan cricket team, well over 19, is hardly the kind of meat anyone would wish to eat — stale, smelly and rancid, it is best to avoid it. Like the Jinn the Pakistani people are confused whether to laugh or cry over the bizarre events that have unfolded like a bad script ever since the miserable Pakistanis landed Down Under, a team asunder from day one. What has since happened is less and less like cricket and more and more like a very bad joke that has been remorselessly thrust down our throats by the clowns who call themselves Test cricketers. A bunch of highly erratic baboons would have done better than these “seasoned” campaigners and “talented” youngsters, the combination of which was touted as the best thing to happen to Pakistan cricket. Sure.

While I am no expert, I can surmise, like many of us can, that there are four theatres that are in play that together add up to what we call Pakistan cricket. There is the PCB which specialises in being the goofiest organisation known to mankind, there is the team, a bunch of unruly, greedy, under-performing yahoos, there is the team management which is as inspiring as a log of wood on a rainy day. And then there are the yobs in the Senate and the National Assembly who have nothing better to do all day than rant and rave, pronounce judgments and summon all manner of people to appear before them – all this noise leading to nothing. These interfering nobodies are just as bad as all the other components that cause national embarrassment, day in and day out.

This nonsense has simply gone too far. Are there any good men or women ready to bury the rotting cadaver called Pakistan cricket and begin the daunting and frightening task of rebuilding the game, from A to Z (an unfortunate expression, I confess)? My answer is, “No.” Baboons will be replaced by baboons. That’s the way it goes.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com