The buck has stopped

MARCH 2003 - Three times semi finalists and one time world champions, Pakistan were predictably thrown out like common garbage from the 2003 World Cup last Tuesday sinking our reputation to an all-time low. This is the culmination of the rot that set in almost four years back. Our team – more importantly, our cricket has gone to the dogs, although I find this insulting to the dogs. For millions of our people who lead lives of great deprivation, the game stands for something more than just the game that it is. This Cup for whom we have suffered four years of self-praise and related hogwash from the PCB and for whose successful capture the PCB corps commanders had developed meticulous plans (‘I want the Cup on my table,’) resulted in disappointment, frustration, heartbreak and seething rage. At the end of all the super talk, all the claims, all the stifling of criticism, all the arrogance and all the warped policies, the whole campaign sank with just about as much fizz as last year’s left over cola. Now the great game of passing the buck has begun.

While the gods poured rain and scorn in Bulawayo on the damp afternoon of 4th March, that most agreeable TV compere, Mohsin Hassan Khan, whose ambition in life is to forever agree with the establishment, talked with Mr. Bari, the Chief Selector (of what, we don’t quite know) and eventually the PCB Chairman. As expected, the General wasted no time and laid the blame on the touring selection squad, the captain and all the senior players. No one else was responsible for the worst ever performance by Pakistan since the World Cup began in 1975. QED. Even before the team is unceremoniously shoved into the first flights home and even before it slinks into Pakistan, in ones and twos, the case has been opened and shut in double quick time. In another world, this may be the way to bury this particularly rotting corpse, but unfortunately the time has come for the magnificent men of Pakistan’s cricket superstructure, to answer questions. This is not a country of accountability; the practice confined to a select few for cosmetic purposes, but while Pakistanis will philosophically accept even the robbing of the exchequer, cricket and the manner of our demise, is another matter. Cricket does not belong to those who strut about with swagger sticks in the plush offices of Gaddafi Stadium, but the common people whose hearts rise and fall on the streets of Pakistan.

For years, good counsel provided free of cost to the PCB to set its priorities right, have fallen by the wayside. Instead, a coterie of favourites, chosen at whim, has been given carte blanche authority to play havoc with the game. People like Intikhab Alam had hinted darkly months ago that we stood no chance at the World Cup unless we drastically re-evaluated our strategies, our players and our officials. Majid Khan, spoke, wrote and wrung his large hands in anguish warning that the fundamentals were wrong. Imran, whose views and judgments on cricket are brilliant, spoke many times straight from the heart and pleaded with the PCB to set things right. Today, if Pakistan’s cricket lies in tatters, why should anyone be surprised? It has been coming for a long time; only the PCB refused to see it that way. Pakistan’s cricket fell into the wrong hands that were never qualified to run it from the first day – but that’s the story of our land isn’t it?

The kangaroo enquiry board set up by the PCB is a joke and an outright insult. Its composition of paid PCB employees and beneficiaries and the presence of so many nobodies, speaks volumes about the sincerity of the effort, a last ditch effort to cloud the real issues. The Naushads, Ranas and xxx are programmed to place the blame at every door other than the Chairman’s. Everyone knows that the General has run the PCB without any one daring to question any of his decisions. The few who did were shown the door. Those who wrote against his policies were either bought over (Mr. Sami ul Hasan, formerly of the Dawn and lately Media Manager, stand up and take your bows) or sorted out in other ways. When a military campaign fails, it’s the general who takes the rap, not the corporal. PCB has been a one-man show since 1999. Pakistan has continued to plummet getting sound thrashing from one team after another, winning only against mediocre sides. The South African safari is only the rotting icing on the rotten cake. The general’s heart may be in the right place, but that is not good enough. Good intentions don’t win world trophies. His buddies may love Vision 2005, but it doesn’t solve our problems. There is no constitution, no cricket council to ask questions, challenge decisions or order independent enquiries three and more years since the golden age of cricket dawned. If the PCB wished to run its affairs along professional lines, why weren’t these fundamental steps taken? It doesn’t require Einstein to work out how cricket should be run. We have known it for years, yet such is the lust for power and glory that neither has the PCB been built into a mature, responsible and progressive body nor has Pakistan’s domestic cricket ever been organized to function the way it does with spectacular results all over the world.

Dumping Moin and appointing Waqqar captain 22 months back, was a disaster. We have set something of a world record in disasters since then. Every court jester at Gaddafi Stadium told us ad nauseum that they were concentrating on 2003. Was the farce we saw unfold, their unique contribution for three long years? The PCB Chairman surrounded himself with obliging rubber stamps, favourites, sycophants, and court jesters, mediocre rankers who faithfully echoed their master’s voice. These men came and went, making bundles of money, taking trips abroad, having a great time and confounding matters. Money was frittered away – cricketers promised Rs 20 million each for winning the Cup and 14 million blown on an ill-planned fiasco to send off the team that only reflected the chaos and confusion that was later to become the signature tune of our squad of players and free loaders.

Foreign coaches were hired indiscriminately, past heroes and prolific cricketers at home ignored or hired and turfed out at will, while white skins pocketed salaries that are too obscene to be named here. They contributed nothing, yet no one could dare question this. Absolute nobodies wielded influence and power far beyond their capabilities. People like Sikander Bakht, a mediocre player and not exactly famous for his brains, ruled as cricket analyst. On that loudmouth schizophrenic moron, Shoaib Akhtar, this Board squandered millions, even placing a personal doctor and a personal fast bowling coach, yet the 100 mph lout got thumped all over South Africa. The great Tendulkar showed him the difference between chalk and cheese. In the simplistic thinking and bragging ways that was the PCB’s mission statement, the goods train from Rawalpindi would win us the Cup hands down, single-handedly ! We changed four batting openers in four matches, we traveled with an unfit Azhar Mehmood who enjoyed a tour on which he never played, we dumped Saqlain and Sami, for reasons known only to the General and God, carried on playing the pea-brained, talent less Afridi. We sent Mr. Shehryar Khan as Manager and another 8 officials, a new record, but Mr. Butt of the PCB said that was a lie, since only 8 in all had gone!! Waqqar Younis was no captain, a man totally out of touch with his team, yet he was picked over Wasim. This and dozens of more mistakes were made by the PCB in an arrogant and vile fashion. Disaster was written on every wall from day one, but who was reading the writing on the wall?

Cricket is dead. What we have is cricket’s Kargil and Ojhri Camp rolled into one. There must be a post mortem but not by the chosen drones of the PCB. This insult the general cannot heap on our sagging shoulders. The enquiry has to be an above the board, free of interference, independent, honest and brutal examination of a national failure. The game is much larger than the petty men who have ruined it. It is already late but the General must do the honourable thing and step down. This failure is very much his doing. The buck has come to a full stop. And this time perhaps, President Pervez Musharraf should be gracious to accept his departure and spare the nation the agony of suffering another general. For starters, let us restore the PCB Constitution and give cricket back to the people.