As the Chinese philosopher Confucius once remarked: “Ability will never catch up with the demand for it” – an observation pertinent for many English cricket fans and sages today.
As an avid English cricket fan the two results in Dubai and Abu Dhabi over the last two weeks have been nothing short of catastrophic. As an English cricket fan that is. For it is nothing like a real catastrophe.
This result is nothing like Michael Atherton’s melodramatic statement: “This is as bad as it gets.” Nor is it, as Geoff Boycott, in a similarly emotionally aggrandized reaction – as is usual – said: “You had to see it to believe how bad it was.” And nor is it, to complete the standard ballyhoo the English media perfunctorily indulge in following a bad England loss, what BBC correspondent Stephan Shemilt described it as – “abject”. You would have thought these pundits were witnessing the Battle of the Somme.
A real catastrophe would be more than 100 people dying from contaminated heart medicine prescribed to over 40,000 people in a nation’s capital city.
And this is the same nation whose international reputation is now menacingly overshadowed by a largely unwanted affiliation with the Taliban in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s assassination.
And this is the same nation who, in trying to reconcile a hostile public with political operations, only exposes the deep-rooted and everlasting polarity between the people who are run by the regime and the people who run the regime.
And this is the same nation whose cricketers cannot play a match of test match cricket on their home soil for fear of a suicide attack.
And this is the same nation whose inability to play a home cricket match is the consequence of the actions of three of its most promising, in terms of talent, cricketers – Salman Butt, Mohammed Amir and Mohammed Yousuf.
Test cricket needs a rejuvenated Pakistan
So in an attempt to reclaim an objective perspective in the aftermath of another woeful test match performance by England, it is fitting to consider the freedoms that my country of birth confers on its citizens, in contradistinction to Pakistan.
Of course there are observers who find many faults with the British political system; not least myself. But I can’t remember the last time widespread disease in Britain was a news topic with fatal conclusions. And I can’t remember the last time an English citizen was so outraged by his country’s performance that he irrationally threatened to take the lives of his own country’s representatives – other than in some ‘local’ pubs with ‘local’ people whose right wing extremism is fuelled by Strongbow rather than political sensibilities.
It’s also good to see a Pakistan team mixing it with the top-dogs in international cricket again. I can’t think of any cricket fan who wouldn’t want to see an emerging Pakistan team reach the level of its previous star-studded teams with the ability to challenge all-comers.
Indeed, test match cricket is in need of another major player as the ICC schedule becomes more jam-packed every year. But a bigger and more pressing entity than test cricket is in need of a Pakistan team filled with role models: the nation of Pakistan.
Just as Misbah’s team knelt down and kissed the Abu Dhabi turf one by one, so too were Pakistani citizens sending amorous blessings to Allah above for bestowing a marvelous victory on a profoundly unsettled nation.
An Arabain proverb from One Thousand and One Nights says: “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.” If only for a few fleeting hours Misbah’s Pakistan cricket team have provided a welcome and much needed ray of optimistic sunshine on the horizon of Pakistan’s rocky and uncertain horizon.
Yes Pakistan may be in the gutter, but some of her populace is gazing at the stars.
Posted on January 29, 2012
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