A news-clipping in a local newspaper caught my eye the other day. A senior player of Pakistan cricket team has accused the country’s cricket board - “PCB wants us to fail at the World Cup!”
And then the startling revelation that Inzamam-Ul-Haq has resigned as Pakistan chief selector over allegations of a conflict of interest linked to the team’s poor performance at the World Cup in India.
A double whammy, so to speak!
This is a serious allegation as the supreme body of the game in Pakistan stands accused of sabotaging the chances of the national team in the on-going tournament through subterfuge activities.
Not that the highly-fancied team has done anything much to enhance its reputation as one of the best in the world in the competition underway in India.
With Pakistan’s chances of reaching the semi-finals hinging around various permutations and combinations, it does appear that it is not the team’s abilities on the ground but different sets of mathematical postulations deciding its fate in the tournament.
The massive win over Bangladesh does however give the Pakistani dressing room something to cheer about. Let us not forget that teams are known to bounce back into contention after dismal performances initially to script the most improbable of wins.
As we saw in the New Zealand tie; with the weather Gods too showering the Pakistani team with their magnanimity, the beleaguered team may yet ‘stumble’ into the semi-finals.
Pakistan’s campaign in the 1992 World Cup when weather and mathematics helped them first to the semi-finals and then eventually to the title readily comes to one’s mind.
Nevertheless it is a fanciful prospect and one which can rev up the interests of many aficionados of the game who never tire of fancying a battle royal between India and Pakistan.
After all, cricket is known to be a game of uncertainties!
As a cricket enthusiast, I would love nothing more than a summit clash between India and Pakistan. But at the same time, as with every other Indian, I would strongly root for the national team and sincerely wish that the World Cup comes home to India!
Similar sentiments must be echoing all across Pakistan as well, albeit with a wish that Pakistan lifts the World Cup!!
That is why the whisper of allegation by a senior player against the Pakistan Cricket Board for hampering the team’s World Cup campaign comes as rude shock!
Sporting bodies should be imposing faith in their players who made it to the national squad after stringent selection procedures.
Sporting events are played out in stadiums where teams contest against each other for ultimate glory. At that level where hardly anything separates the sides from each other in terms of quality and temperament, it is the better side of the day that runs away with the honours in a match.
But these days, sporting careers seem to be made and wrecked at the whims and fancies of administrators who occupy seats of power in various sporting organizations and associations.
With enough reasons to imply that corruption, nepotism and fraud in selection process hamper sports and sportspersons worldwide, there arises an immediate need to look into these discrepancies which would otherwise ruin the sport in general.
Look at the West Indies!
The team, for the first time in history, failed to qualify for the Cricket World Cup 2023. It was knocked out of World Cup 2023 losing to Scotland in the qualifying rounds.
Cricket has traditionally been the most popular sport in the West Indies. Yet the sharp decline in the cricketing fortunes of the side has a lot to do with the way the game has been managed by the Board, besides a host of other reasons.
From giants to minnows, the definitive fall of West Indies cricket is a dismal chapter in world cricket. The legendary West Indies team of the ‘70s and ‘80s, as has been rightly said, ‘is stuff of lived memory for older generations of cricket lovers in India “ and folklore for the current generation’.
However, the present team is a pale shadow of its former self. A story that spans decades of dominance, the current side does not do justice to the formidable legacy that it has inherited.
One reason that seems to find concurrence with a majority of die-hard fans of West Indies is the contention that the West Indies Cricket Board has faced numerous internal disputes and governance issues.
Political interference, inadequate man management and a lack of focus too has contributed equally to the downfall. Inconsistent performance, a lack of team cohesion and a weak domestic cricket structure has further added to the woes.
The bleak situation notwithstanding, the West Indies have the wherewithal to bounce back into reckoning and reassert their numero uno position in world cricket.
Coming back to our neighbouring nation!
The book “Cricket cauldron: The Turbulent Politics of Sport in Pakistan” co-authored by Shaharyar M Khan and his son Dr Ali Khan, rightly sums up the gist of the problems afflicting Pakistan cricket.
The book very candidly states that the series of controversies which stirred Pakistan’s volatile cricket cauldron have brought forward the ugly face of Pakistan cricket.
Imran Khan, former cricketer and political figure in Pakistan, writing the foreword to the book commends it for the insider account of Pakistan cricket and for grasping the main political and social issues across the Pakistan spectrum as reflected in its current cricket landscape.
It is very easy for a few to game the system. That is a universal phenomenon. But nobody has actually tried to gauge the extent to which political interference and rank bad administration could seriously mar the chances of the sports’ growth in the country, and globally.
The squads in ‘Maroon’ and ‘Green’ amply demonstrate this universal truth.
