Live omens

Published March 24, 2016
The writer is an author.
The writer is an author.

ONE should always heed omens. The Ancients did. Our cricket captain Shahid Afridi should have done on March 19.

It was a day too close to the Ides of March. The portents were clear enough. First, the venue of Pakistan’s match against India in the T20 World Cup tournament had to be relocated from hilly Dharamsala to humid Kolkata after the local Congress Himachal Pradesh government proved an unwilling host. Pakistani diplomats were denied visas to support their team. The start of the game was delayed by Bengal’s fickle rains. When it did begin, Shafqat Amanat sang our national anthem half-throatedly, dropping words like some butter-fingered fielder.

An Indian coin was tossed; Pakistan lost. Shahid Afridi found himself having to bat on a damp outfield, watched by a Colosseum full of 66,000 inimical Indians, a carping Javed Miandad at home, and an avuncular Imran Khan, offering belated advice from the Eden Gardens dressing room. Premonitions hovered darkly above the stadium.

Any lesser younger captain might have been daunted by such signs and thrown in the bat. Instead, Afridi battled on, snatching defeat from the jaws of disaster. At times, the game seemed so one-sided that perhaps the only viewers who could bear to watch it were the bookies who had a stake in its outcome. For the Pakistani public, it was Eden Lost; for the Indians, Eden Regained.


Patriotism should be declared a banned substance in sport.


No war game releases the same spurt of patriotism as does an Indo-Pak match. It brings out the best in a home side and the worst in visitors. Jingoism enhances performance without improving sportsmanship. For this reason alone, patriotism should be declared a banned substance in sport.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) determines globally which substances and techniques should be forbidden. It categorises them as androgens, blood doping, peptide hormones, stimulants, diuretics, narcotics, and cannabinoids. Interestingly, the use of alcohol is banned but only in select sports, and that too only during actual competition. There is no approved substitute available to Muslims.

The criterion applied by Wada specifies that any drug, substance or technique would be banned if (a) it has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance, (b) it represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete, (c) it violates the spirit of sport.

Anyone who has heard noisy rivalries during any international event across the world (even the Olympics), or the roar in Eden Gardens that day, would be forgiven for believing that such contests violate all three conditions. In Kolkata, Amitabh Bachchan singing the Indian national anthem in his faux baritone constituted an unfair advantage. He sang to enhance his national team’s performance. The HP government’s warning to Pakistani players contravened section (b), and the threat by Hindu extremists to dig up the pitch violated section (c). Clearly, Wada needs to widen its net of definitions.

Wada might like to expand its ambit of review by including ethics in sports, for nowhere is there a need for ethical reforms than in international bodies, such as Fifa, which are as susceptible to self-abuse as players and athletes are.

Fifa is the Vatican of football. It operates with all the arcane secrecy associated with the Holy See, before the corruption of its Banco Ambrosiano was exposed in 1982. Fifa, like the Roman Catholic Church, once depended on Peter’s pence — the common man’s coinage — from its members to sustain itself. Today, like the Vatican, it has outgrown such grubby fund-raising. It is now a vast and affluent business conglomerate with radial interests, headed by a president elected by a conclave of over 200 diocesan interests.

Fifa began modestly in 1904. Over the past 100 years of its existence, though, it has been dominated by three presidents who between them ruled it for almost 65 years: Jules Rimet (33 years), João Havelange (24 years), and his immediate successor Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter (seven years). Blatter was recently ‘persuaded’ to resign under a cloud of suspicion.

Fifa’s declared objective is “to improve the game of football constantly and promote it globally in the light of its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values, particularly through youth and development programmes”. Search within these lines. Nowhere will you find the words ‘integrity’ or ‘morality’. Fifa would appear to have cocooned itself within the protective doctrine of secular infallibility.

In today’s sports conglomerates, success is measured from the bottom line upwards. Money matters more to them. They have yet to achieve gender equality. The Pakistan T20 men’s cricket team lost to India, and the nation mourned. The Pakistan T20 women’s cricket team won against India. That success went unsung. Women obviously are unaffected by omens.

Ancient Romans sought protection from bad luck by carrying a live fly in a white handkerchief. Someone in Kolkata should have slipped one to Shahid Afridi.

The writer is an author.

www.fsaijazuddin.pk

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2016

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