01 December 2004	Wednesday	18 Shawwal 1425

Where was the need for the PCB to get members of the team bound for Australia to sign central contracts on the eve of their departure? Was there any particular compulsion or legal formality that had to be fulfilled? Was there any kind of pressure on the PCB or some kind of ultimatum?

Leave alone the principle of central contacts and not everybody is convinced that they are the best way of keeping the work-force happy, it is the timing that seems unfortunate.

The tour of Australia, purely in cricketing terms, could be a make or break tour for the team as a whole and also for some players. It is a long tour and it was imperative that the send-off should have been without any kind of controversy.

Shoaib Akhtar has refused to sign the contract and there may be a few more who may have swallowed their pride but can't be happy. Against any opponent, a player is expected to give hundred percent but more is required against Australia. There should not be any disgruntled elements and the team should not resemble an unhappy family.

I am certain that a lot of thought must have been given to drawing up the central contracts including legal advice. Yet they seem to be deeply flawed. The criteria adopted is seniority and apparently no weight has been given to performance.

Sports is one activity in which seniority counts for little. It is current form that matters. Irfan Pathan has been playing Test cricket for about a year while someone like Ajit Agarkar has been playing longer. Can the two be compared?

Seniority matters if one is a government servant and even in that case promotions are based on seniority cum merit. The chief beneficiaries seem to be Inzamam and Yousuf Youhana though Shoaib Akhtar and Abdul Razzaq were a kind of afterthought because there were grumblings.

The PCB chairman says that he consulted Inzamamul Haq, Bob Woolmer and Wasim Bari. Bari, however has disassociated himself from these central contracts, saying rightly that it was an administrative matter but adding that all over the world selection committees are involved in making the criteria for selection of players who are being given central contracts.

I do not see what was the need for involving Woolmer who is the coach of the team and should not be getting involved in in-house administrative matters. He is meant to be a technocrat with a specific brief, which is to coach the national team and not function on matters outside that brief.

Even worse is that contracts have been offered to Shabbir Ahmed and Taufiq Umar who are not members of the Australia squad but not to Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Khalil who are!

I don't want to go into too much detail but all I can say is that on the face of it, the grading of players based solely on seniority is wrong. I also do not want to comment on the fact that these central contracts have a validity of only seven months, which seems conveniently to cover Pakistan tour of India. Who knows what could happen after that tour if it should go badly?

I am sorry that the advice I gave in one of columns was not considered which was to wait till after the Australian. Perhaps there was some unusual hurry about which I am not aware. We already have one 'casualty' in Shoaib Akhtar who has shown some defiance by not signing the contract though it may not affect his performance, one hopes.

England is touring Zimbabwe after all but seems to be making no secret of the fact that it is a reluctant guest. Sports and politics should be kept separate but it is not always possible to do so. The BJP government had not allowed its cricket team to play against and this decision had nothing to do with cricket.

Then, after Mr Vajpayee had visited Pakistan and the two countries were embarked on confidence building measure, cricket relation was resumed but it was a political decision. The two cricket boards were merely pawns.

It is no secret that the British government is hell-bent on a regime change in Zimbabwe. But the implications of pulling out of the cricket tour would have been an admission of political interference in matters of sport and it is necessary to keep up appearances. But mixing sports and politics can be a double-edged sword. Not that it is likely to happen but suppose some country was to decide not to send its national sports team to Britain because Britain was one of the countries that invaded Iraq and is heavily engaged in what even the Secretary-General of the United Nations has called an "illegal war".

In the long term it is best that sports and politics are kept apart. Sport is something that brings joy to a lot of people. The same cannot be said of politics. But not to allow members of the British cricket media to cover the tour was totally daft and I am glad that better sense prevailed and the Zimbabwe government realized that it was an own goal.