19 May 2004	Wednesday	28 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

Once it was decided that the Football World Cup would go to Africa, it was a foregone conclusion that South Africa would host it. Just to make sure, South Africa brought its weapon of mass persuasion, Nelson Mandela to make the case for it.

When it was announced that South Africa had won the bid, there was an eruption of joy in Johannesburg and other cities. But I feel that a great opportunity was lost in Morocco missing out.

Here was a God-sent chance to reach out to the Arab world and embrace it and calm the nerves and cool its temper. Instead, as was mentioned either by BBC or CNN reporter, the fear of terrorism was a primary consideration.

Apparently, the entire Arab world is to be excluded from mounting international sports events for it is seen as tainted with terrorism. The bigotry extends beyond politics.

With this reservation, I am delighted for South Africa. It has already hosted the rugby and cricket world cups. But football is the game that the black South Africans play, as someone said, "it is mother's milk to them".

Immediately some calculations were made. Hundreds of thousand jobs will be created and tourism will get a big boost. It will be a golden opportunity to showcase this rainbow nation of blacks and whites and brown, of Muslim and Christian and Jews, a country that turned the nightmare of apartheid into a dream of equal rights.

I have been to South Africa. It is a beautiful country, a sad country in a way, but one of hope. It is, after all, the country of Nelson Mandela. It struck me that Pakistan co-hosted the cricket World Cup in 1987 and 1996 and recently a mega-tour by India watched by billions around the world television.

We not only missed out on showcasing Pakistan, but ended up with Dean Jones arriving at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on a donkey cart. And we expect our players to show some national pride and henceforth the team will be called Team Pakistan!

Wasim Akram is to be honoured at a function that will be sponsored by PIA and the chief guest will be the chairman of PIA. He will be the chief guest as well as the chief host.

No one knows more than Wasim Akram himself that I have been one of his supporters. I have written in praise of him more than any other cricketer and have stood by his side through all the troubles he has gone through.

He has been a wonderful cricketer and the best left-arm fast bowler the game has ever known. The country owes him a lot. But he owes the country a lot as well and this is where I have a slight quarrel with him. He has been an employee of PIA for many years and has appeared for PIA in domestic tournaments, but not on a regular basis.

PIA has employed many sportsmen and they have gone on to become regular employees, rising to senior ranks in management, officers of the highest calibre. Wasim Akram is not destined to be one of them. Nor has he started to give back to the country what he owes. He has become a rich man.

It is not just a case of whether he should be the bowling coach of the national team. He should have got involved, on his own initiative, with grass-roots cricket, started, if not an academy, at least training camps for poor children.

We all can't be Imran Khan who built a cancer hospital, but there is so much that ex-Test cricketers with the celebrity of Wasim Akram can do for the game without being invited by the PCB.

I have no objection at all to the legend being honoured, but the legend must start honouring the country that enabled him to become a legend, there has to be some social conscience on display.

He could start by becoming a full-time employee of PIA and taking charge of its cricket academy and reviving its Colts scheme, which produced so many Test and first-class cricketers in the past.

I had started it and put Hanif Mohammad in charge and two of us sat many an afternoon in the burning sun to watch over the budding cricketers. Words fail me at the accusation made by Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, that Muttiah Muralitharan was a 'chucker'. He has needlessly, jumped head first, in troubled waters.

Howard is the prime minister who took his country to war in Iraq and enthusiastically endorsed the conventional wisdom at the time that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been found and those making these claims found their credibility strained.

I have no idea what possessed him to slam Muralitharan. One would have thought that he had enough on his plate. Understandably, Muralitharan has reacted with anger and he may not tour Australia with the Sri Lanka team by way of a protest.

Howard is an avid cricket fan and is entitled to his opinion, but if he was an ordinary citizen, no one would have paid the slightest attention to him. Does he realise that he has politicised 'chucking'?

It was in Australia that the chucking row over Murali's bowling action erupted and it the Australian umpires who started it all. Murali's bowling action had been cleared by the ICC. Now it is one delivery, the doosra that has been called into question.

Is Howard questioning the doosra? Or is it an open-ended accusation that Murali is just a 'chucker'? He needs to clarify this and, perhaps, offer his credentials to pass a judgement that could be career threatening for the Sri Lankan wizard. Or there may be some method in the madness.

Howard may be clearing the way for fellow-Australian Shane Warne. All things considered, Howard should be concentrating all his energies in finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and leave the legality of Murali's bowling action to more competent authorities.