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With things now back to normal in Pakistan cricket, Edward Murphy stands vindicated yet once again. ‘Everything that can go wrong will go wrong,’ says Murphy’s law and we all tend to do his memory great service by keeping him relevant more often than not.
The national team’s performance — or rather the lack of it — at the Asia Cup was not quite the whole thing. Fake and fragile jingoism aside, anybody who follows the game with any degree of objectivity never expected the team to lift the trophy. The abject manner in which it all happened was again nothing new, but it did set Murphy’s law in motion.
When things start going wrong in Pakistan cricket, there seems to be no end to it. Batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy, coaching, mentoring, managing … everything goes wrong. It is an implosion of spectacular dimensions and the process continues till that one sparkling victory based mostly on some freak feat — some bowler making it big with the bat, or some batsman taking a bagful of wickets — that brings back the hunky-dory days. Have no doubt, it will happen again.
With one Asia Cup defeat behind them and a challenging World T20 assignment ahead, the PCB chief and the national captain have their focus on thinking aloud in public
What validates Murphy’s law even more is the sound bites emerging from within the official set-up. They are quite reminiscent of the bad old days when, say, Ejaz Butt used to be at the helm. Having said that, thinking aloud in public has not been the primary characteristic of the Butt, or, for that matter, PCB administration alone. It is part of our national culture, it seems, because politicians and decision-makers do it all the time. We apparently struggle to digest the simple fact that thinking is meant to be done behind closed doors and what you make public is only the decision. And, if you are rational enough, when you go public, you do it with a bit of planning.
Who was thinking of retirement when, and what kind of a captaincy deal was struck with whom against what kind of a bargain is not what you discuss in public. Had it been media encroachment, or even a media leak, it would have made some sense, but when the captain and the PCB chairman officially do it in full public glare, one just feels awestruck by the level of buffoonery at the highest level of our cricketing pyramid.
Maybe, Murphy was a visionary who could see that at some point in time Nawabzada Shahryar Mohammad Khan and Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi would go out of their way and take it upon themselves to do him the honour of proving his law right. What was more painful of the two: watching the team go down in a shameless heap at the Asia Cup, or watching the top two going over the top with their own brands of mindlessness? The Nawabzada can at least hide behind his age, but what about the Sahibzada?
As if it was not enough, Sahibzada took to social media to seek prime ministerial intervention, requesting Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif “to look into the barriers which are preventing talent from grass-root level to rise and prove their worth”. This is well and truly as WOW! a statement as there can ever be. Just the timing of it is WOW!
We suffered serious embarrassment in Bangladesh and we chopped and changed the World T20 squad till the last moment. And, instead of focusing on the assignment ahead that goes under way in a matter of days, not weeks, the national captain decides to talk of cricket at the grass-root. If this is not WOW!, pray, tell what is.
At the time of writing these lines, the PCB is said to be considering an official reprimand of sorts for the captain for having sought direct intervention from the office of the prime minister. Though nauseating, the unfolding drama is seriously gripping. And that being so, it does not call for much imagination to see what is in store at the World T20.
Going by the general sentiment one often comes across among the men on the street, a security threat may well provide the team with an easy way out of imminent embarrassment in India, but that is too layperson to say that. Let’s side with those who are hoping against hope for that one freak feat that will obliterate just about everything … till it all gets back to its normal chaotic self!
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 13th, 2016
