The White Man’s Burden

JANUARY 2000 - “Pass me the salt, Gunga Din,” said that rascal from Yorkshire, Fred Trueman to a member of the Indian cricket team that toured England many, many years ago. That remark set off a diplomatic crisis but in the end, nothing much came of it. Certainly Trueman had the last word and went on to become a great fast bowler for his country.

The racial slur has never quite let us off the hook. Fifty years down that long road, it rears its ugly white head every now and then, from the streets of Brighton down to the cricket ovals of Australia.

The Shoaib-Saga is now into its second week with cross statements flying at just about the same speed as the faster one – and the one that’s caused all the furore, with just about the same deadly results. Between the ICC that sits in all its forlorn imperial majesty and takes a dismissive look at the wogs who have mastered the game they created to the game’s talented administrators who have a hard time determining if they are coming or going, the game of cricket is taking a right royal beating, but then who really cares? White is white and black, sadly will always be black.

Over here in Pakistan, it took somebody like the half-installed, half-dismissed Secretary of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Shafqat Rana, to call a spade a spade and a black one at that. Everyone feels the same way that he does about the unfair and bigoted manner in which Shoaib has been derailed, but because most of us can’t stand with our spine straight when it comes to facing our former masters, no one had the courage to tell the Australian media in this case, that what Shoaib and Pakistan were being subjected to, was racism of the worst kind. We might as well put Nelson Mandela back in jail while we are at it. He is not the right colour. In a twist of irony, the General who seems to be basking in the limelight of so much media coverage announced in Karachi that his Secretary’s statement was most unfortunate. His 2-I-C, sun bathing in Australia when asked for his views, threw caution to the winds and dismissed the Secretary’s opinion as nonsense. So there. While the General would have been well advised to consult his Secretary before airing his reaction, the good Brigadier should surely have stuck to the one job that he should be concentrating on. Cricket. Instead, he shoots from the hip and is now going to be in the middle of a media war where he is bound to get a few tight slaps and strong nudges in the rear from the hostile and prejudiced press that Australia is (in) famous for. But if you think for a moment that the Brigadier has bit his lip and said, ‘Oops,’ you are mistaken. The blessed thought wouldn’t cross his mind.

What the trio of our officials has achieved is to establish discord in their thinking. When we most need to look and stay united, we look and remain divided. The question is not why Shafqat said what he said or did not say. The fact is that he hit the nail – a black one I suppose, on the head when he replied to an Australian media enquiry in the affirmative when questioned if it was racial discrimination. That should have been the PCB’s collective stand. If the General’s striking corps is not so striking any more, let the Lieutenant do the shooting, but then don’t shoot him in the foot, which is exactly what’s happened. A right royal mess. While the ICC now huddles in another debate, Shafqat’s question remains unanswered. Why is it always coloured folk who get the red card? Murli got it; Chouhan and Manoj got it and now Shoaib. Is it this part of Asia that gives the masters the heebie jeebies? Why, might one ask, though that is really a rather silly question?

In cricket we have always been at the receiving end, never able to give as good as we got. So often, it has not been a case of what was said but what was not said. In the commentator’s box, men like Tony Greig who carry the white man’s burden manfully, are ready at all times to pass odd remark that speaks volumes. Should a Pakistani fielder fumble with the ball while sliding to save a four and should his leg touch the rope, Tony Greig will make enough noises to convey that basically the fielder is hoping to cheat everyone. Sometimes it is not possible for the person actually in the field to know exactly what’s happened, but the critics armed with super slow motion cameras training down from nine angles, will know to the millimeter what really happened. If the fielder is coloured, the tone and the inflection of the voice says a thousand things. If however the player is coloured correctly, there is no such hint. It doesn’t happen all the time and Tony Greig is not the only one. The incidents are multiple as are the men who pass remarks well below dignified levels. It’s been going on for years. There are far too many incidents to fit in here, but they could well constitute a book.

Conversely, when they travel here, we bend over backwards to be gracious to our visitors from abroad. We open our homes, traditionally a thing most Pakistanis do without thinking, we throw lavish dinners and run errands for the whole lot without so much as a protesting whisper. I don’t think these are favours we are bestowing on them. This is the way we are, right or wrong, but very often this attitude is seen as an act of inferiority before the power of the white man. It is a conclusion of sad proportions and it is drawn far too often. Every touring team complains of bad food here and in India and it was Majid Khan who corrected the record saying that the reason foreign teams ran so often to the bathrooms was their enormous appetite for our food, a far more delicious repertoire than boiled cabbage and potatoes on the side. Right now, in Australia, the Indians led by Gavaskar and Kapil have exploded over the one sided Australian umpiring. The Pakistani contingent on the other hand have no Kapil or Gavaskar to tell the media like it is. There is the Brigadier and his anonymous assistant plucked from some obscure, termite-ridden woodwork. The foreign media will make mince meat of their inept and amateur handling of some delicate matters that lie ahead. At home, things are not any better. Had we men of experience right now and not necessarily those of simply good intentions, we could have made a match of it, but we are outclassed and in the end, whether Shoaib plays or not, it will be another victory for the masters of the game.