fatman17
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View By Leon Menezes
Leon Menezes on the love-hate relationship that has come to grip all of Pakistan
Dear Pakistan Cricket...
Dear Pakistan Cricket:
I am writing to express my joy/sorrow, happiness/anger, and admiration/disappointment over the way in which you play the game.
There is no other person, entity or occasion in Pakistan that can evoke the range of emotions in this nation that you can: from the ecstatic highs of victory to the deepest, darkest blues over a defeat. When you win (especially against India), the bhangra dancers come out, aerial firing rips through the air, and people have nothing else to talk about for at least a week. But any loss to a mediocre team or at a critical stage in a tournament brings not just grief but also accusations of you being up to some hanky-panky. This is the dance we are destined to do every time you go out to play.
Shahid Afridi
The nation looks upon your performance with blinkers on, as if the opposition is not there to play cricket. We only see your faults (and there are many) and every matter, from team selection to batting order, has an element of suspicion about it. It doesn't matter that every other team knocked out of the World T20 tournament had almost the same ups and downs as you did; all that matters is that you screwed up.
England was the reigning champion coming into this event but couldn't make it to the Super-8 stage; New Zealand lost two matches in the Super Overs; South Africa couldn't make the semis - but none of this matters. When we lost to India in the Super-8s, you were the vilest villains on the face of the earth; but when we made it to the semi-finals after India got knocked out (thanks to South Africa) you became our heroes once again.
Going by the media reaction (and the millions of Facebookers who just need to prognosticate after every over), I wonder what the emotions would have been had the opposite happened, i.e. if we had beaten India in the Super-8s but got knocked out due to a poorer run rate? All the fun that was made of India on TV and FB would have been reserved for us, right?
All that matters is that you screwed up
Dear Pakistan Cricket: it's not your fault that things are as messed up with you as they are; you are just a microcosm of the general state of Pakistan. From the appointment of favorites and incompetents to run the affairs of the Board, to the inefficient structure of the entire set-up, all the way to the vested interests of power brokers promoting their favorites, everything seems exactly the way everything else is in our country. There isn't a ministry or department or other sports body that is any different. It's just that for us, cricket is front and center and we are all experts.
Shahid Afridi can bite cricket balls, abdicate the captaincy, and underperform for twenty innings in a row and still get selected.
Dear Pakistan Cricket Fan: If everything else around us is in decline, how can you expect cricket to buck the trend? But interestingly, the talent of the players has been increasing steadily while the inherent qualities of character and refinement are waning. It is difficult to get two coherent sentences out of a player during a post-match interview (English or Urdu) and the shouting and screaming while fielding just confirm the state of mind. Former Test Cricketer Sikander Bakht was once asked why the Board doesn't the give the boys some simple elocution lessons. He said that it had been tried but that since most of them had not progressed well in school (and didn't read or write much either), their attention spans couldn't handle the lessons. (Perhaps this is why we do better at Twenty-20 than the longer forms of the game...)
Dear Pakistan Cricket Fan: If everything else around us is in decline, how can you expect cricket to buck the trend?
The rise of the Superstar is also causing us problems. Imran Khan was the last of the "great skippers" but he too had his favorites, and they would keep playing even when they didn't perform well. Nowadays we have Shahid Afridi who can bite cricket balls, abdicate the captaincy, and underperform for twenty innings in a row and still get selected. Contrast this with how England dealt with Kevin Pietersen, undoubtedly their star batsman, this summer: when he made himself unavailable to play ODIs, the ECB dropped him from the T20 squad, while saying, "Players must make themselves available for all formats." And when Pietersen sent disparaging texts to the opposing side, the ECB dropped him from all their international teams. No one is bigger than the game - this was the message.
And so, Dear Pakistan Cricket, we look to the next few years, knowing that you will bring us more joy and sorrow, happiness and anger, admiration and disappointment. Hopefully, this will come without the embarrassment of spot-fixing, ball-tampering, or bad behavior. It would be too much to expect that nepotism and sifarish vanish at once, or that we start selecting players on merit. But we'll pray for it anyway.
Leon lives in Karachi at Silly Mid-off
Leon Menezes on the love-hate relationship that has come to grip all of Pakistan
Dear Pakistan Cricket...
Dear Pakistan Cricket:
I am writing to express my joy/sorrow, happiness/anger, and admiration/disappointment over the way in which you play the game.
There is no other person, entity or occasion in Pakistan that can evoke the range of emotions in this nation that you can: from the ecstatic highs of victory to the deepest, darkest blues over a defeat. When you win (especially against India), the bhangra dancers come out, aerial firing rips through the air, and people have nothing else to talk about for at least a week. But any loss to a mediocre team or at a critical stage in a tournament brings not just grief but also accusations of you being up to some hanky-panky. This is the dance we are destined to do every time you go out to play.
Shahid Afridi
The nation looks upon your performance with blinkers on, as if the opposition is not there to play cricket. We only see your faults (and there are many) and every matter, from team selection to batting order, has an element of suspicion about it. It doesn't matter that every other team knocked out of the World T20 tournament had almost the same ups and downs as you did; all that matters is that you screwed up.
England was the reigning champion coming into this event but couldn't make it to the Super-8 stage; New Zealand lost two matches in the Super Overs; South Africa couldn't make the semis - but none of this matters. When we lost to India in the Super-8s, you were the vilest villains on the face of the earth; but when we made it to the semi-finals after India got knocked out (thanks to South Africa) you became our heroes once again.
Going by the media reaction (and the millions of Facebookers who just need to prognosticate after every over), I wonder what the emotions would have been had the opposite happened, i.e. if we had beaten India in the Super-8s but got knocked out due to a poorer run rate? All the fun that was made of India on TV and FB would have been reserved for us, right?
All that matters is that you screwed up
Dear Pakistan Cricket: it's not your fault that things are as messed up with you as they are; you are just a microcosm of the general state of Pakistan. From the appointment of favorites and incompetents to run the affairs of the Board, to the inefficient structure of the entire set-up, all the way to the vested interests of power brokers promoting their favorites, everything seems exactly the way everything else is in our country. There isn't a ministry or department or other sports body that is any different. It's just that for us, cricket is front and center and we are all experts.
Shahid Afridi can bite cricket balls, abdicate the captaincy, and underperform for twenty innings in a row and still get selected.
Dear Pakistan Cricket Fan: If everything else around us is in decline, how can you expect cricket to buck the trend? But interestingly, the talent of the players has been increasing steadily while the inherent qualities of character and refinement are waning. It is difficult to get two coherent sentences out of a player during a post-match interview (English or Urdu) and the shouting and screaming while fielding just confirm the state of mind. Former Test Cricketer Sikander Bakht was once asked why the Board doesn't the give the boys some simple elocution lessons. He said that it had been tried but that since most of them had not progressed well in school (and didn't read or write much either), their attention spans couldn't handle the lessons. (Perhaps this is why we do better at Twenty-20 than the longer forms of the game...)
Dear Pakistan Cricket Fan: If everything else around us is in decline, how can you expect cricket to buck the trend?
The rise of the Superstar is also causing us problems. Imran Khan was the last of the "great skippers" but he too had his favorites, and they would keep playing even when they didn't perform well. Nowadays we have Shahid Afridi who can bite cricket balls, abdicate the captaincy, and underperform for twenty innings in a row and still get selected. Contrast this with how England dealt with Kevin Pietersen, undoubtedly their star batsman, this summer: when he made himself unavailable to play ODIs, the ECB dropped him from the T20 squad, while saying, "Players must make themselves available for all formats." And when Pietersen sent disparaging texts to the opposing side, the ECB dropped him from all their international teams. No one is bigger than the game - this was the message.
And so, Dear Pakistan Cricket, we look to the next few years, knowing that you will bring us more joy and sorrow, happiness and anger, admiration and disappointment. Hopefully, this will come without the embarrassment of spot-fixing, ball-tampering, or bad behavior. It would be too much to expect that nepotism and sifarish vanish at once, or that we start selecting players on merit. But we'll pray for it anyway.
Leon lives in Karachi at Silly Mid-off
