Cricket Anybody?

MARCH 2004 - The Indian cricket team arrived in Lahore just a few hours back as scheduled. There is a media army – excuse the pun, that’s dogging every step they take and there is more security than all the guests staying at the hotel. Everywhere they are scheduled to go, there is talk of bulletproof coasters to ferry them, undoubtedly with heavy gun toting police escorts ahead and behind and dark tinted glasses to complete the picture or should one say eliminate the picture?

Even in the ground, security forces running into thousands are combing every nook and cranny to find anything that can be defined, even remotely, as a lethal weapon. There are elaborate security devices fitted all around and spectators are not allowed to carry anything into the ground – not even mobile phones. That alone is going to throw a spanner in the works for all the upwardly mobile tech savvy characters, though one hastens to add that no spanners of any kind or description will be allowed in either. As for lunch boxes or tiffins full of omelletes and ‘parathas’, banish the thought. Though Farooq Mazhar and many of his acolytes are long gone and will be sorely missed, I simply shudder to think what FM would have done with any security posse that might have foolishly attempted to separate FM from the veritable feast his family would produce. Great lunches prepared in quantities large enough to feed hungry hordes would arrive on the dot at Gaddafi Stadium and everyone was invited to the party. FM’s lunches were a kind of Lahore institution and it is now part of the collective memory as indeed would be FM’s crowd. That was another time.

It remains to be seen if the Pakistan security think tank is going to insist one security man for every player even when they are out there in the middle. Can’t put it past them to post 11 security guards with 11 Indian fielders. There are high stakes riding on this tour and understandably security is running neck-to-neck with cricket. All cricket lovers and even those not fervently involved with the game are praying and hoping that nothing untoward happens. It is probably very hard for the security sleuths to allow the game to get underway with both sides wielding bats and white cricket balls. For all we know, the security geeks might get ideas that the crafty Al Qaeda has doctored the balls. The series might after all be aptly called the ‘Dhamaka’ Series. Shudder, shudder. This afternoon Lahore is buzzing with the security measures that are unfolding. The Indian team, some say, are using a chartered aircraft to ferry them here and there, not trusting PIA or traveling in the company of ordinary folk. As for Karachi, the plan is in and out with perhaps one overnight stay, the One Day and out the same night for the safer Rawalpindi. Well how safe is Rawalpindi? Every now and then the President escapes by a whisker and at the end of this month is reportedly shifting bag and baggage to the Presidency. The GHQ is abandoning its long held and revered post and relocating to the safer climes of Islamabad though the logic is beyond the comprehension of us lowly commoners. What happens if some crackpot takes a shot at the new GHQ? Are they going to shift to Taxila?

While hoping that the Indian tour takes off in spectacular style and cricket, friendship and peace emerge at last as the winners, the PCB couldn’t have made a bigger mess of things than they did at Karachi. The newspapers have been full of reports and pictures with the happy-to-thrash cops swinging staffs and canes at anybody and everybody. There has been widespread condemnation about the shoddy arrangements for tickets the first day sales opened in Karachi. An anguished letter from a genuine ticket buyer makes hard reading. Waiting since 6 am to buy a ticket, he along with thousands of cricket fans were ‘lathi’ charged and severely beaten having waited patiently for four hours in the sweltering sun. Why were only 3 booths functioning? Some reports say only one booth - Karachi has a cricket crazy population and have been granted just one ODI and no Test. What was going on, other than hot air, through the minds of the PCB’s legions when they launched the sales? In a country where manpower is flowing as freely as sewerage water, could the PCB come up with 3 booths only and why were people made to wait in the open for hours on end?

What did they expect the ticket buyers to do? Sing ditties and play 20 Questions while the clerks sauntered in and out of booths passing out tickets at the speed of light? Does it require a genius to work out the logistics of such an enterprise? And why hasn’t the PCB apologized so far to the ticket paying people of Karachi who were mauled and to add considerable insult to injury, eventually denied the tickets? Since the PCB had thought it fit to eliminate the Associations from staging the matches – another useless controversial decision for which no rationale has escaped the lips of Mr. Rameez Raja or his mentor, the senior diplomat, they should have ensured the right and the best procedures for the event. On the second day, they have done better and all the tickets are sold out. In the process, a company with no expertise in this business was hired and then fired after the fiasco. Dare one ask if they were good enough to be appointed in the first place, why weren’t they good enough to be retained? Either the first or the second decision stinks. There are other reports of rampant black marketing and block buying by vested groups and the vermin that pass for law and order forces. There is silence on these charges. I guess the PCB gurus are far too busy attending gala dinners and attending to more important matters. In matters of cricket, it has always been open season as far as the paying public is concerned. Staffs hit those who want tickets. Those who fight mobs of cops and magistrates to get in, find their seats occupied by free loaders of every shade. What happened at Karachi is not new and one fears the same breakdown at other venues. Since the PCB is drooling at the mouth with dreams of millions why has it made such poor arrangements? There is much talk of computerization, numbered seats and other such dream scenarios, but we will have to see how much of this is talk and how much is going to be delivered.

So far, the PCB’s track record is quite a mess. The much-touted LUMS study seems to have vaporized into thin air – and what will it tell us that we don’t know, the selection is as usual arbitrary, Shahid Afridi doesn’t need another ‘chance’ after 191 ODIs. He needs a brain transplant, but one 50 in a no-consequence match, and he is in and Bazid Khan is out. The Constitution without which cricket will continue to be driven by the whims of men ensuring that power will never have to be shared and there will never be any systems in place means that we will still be lurching up and down on the greasy monkey pole when Mr. Shehryar’s tenure ends or he is booted out. The encroachments around Gaddafi have been demolished overnight. The 30-year plus lesses say it is foul play and no warning was given. PCB has washed its hands off the sordid business. There are other skeletons rattling in the cupboards and each deal has an unsavoury aspect to it. For the ODIs, no public instructions from the PCB have yet to grace the media – if mobiles are not allowed, what will they do when uninformed spectators arrive and are stopped? This is an important tour and PCB must not make a mess of it.