The recent performance of the national hockey team is yet another indicator of how wrong things can go when ‘neglect’ becomes a key word in the equation. All it takes is a blanket disregard for merit amid dwindling fortunes in the international arena. Before you know it you are down the drain. Once there, you can spend as much time as you want talking about regaining the clichéd lost glory. Nobody is impressed. And it helps nobody’s cause except those representing the vested interest.
Cricket, for sure, has a lot to learn from the hockey episode because the former has been following the footsteps of the latter with utmost dedication which, to say the least, is irritating. We are in the phase of the dwindling fortunes. We generally get thrashed, but then there comes the day when we turn the tables on some mighty outfit through some act of brilliance which is almost always as dazzling as it is unexpected. The more unexpected it is, the more we celebrate … the more the officials enjoy because it gives them a fresh lease of life in an office that they don’t deserve.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that despite everything that went wrong, the national team delivered a decent performance at the T20 World Cup, say, sneaking through to the semi-final and then bowing out while not having made a fool of themselves in that one match. Would there still have been talk of changes within the cricket setup? Would there still have been names floating around as a possible successor to the PCB throne?
The more unexpected the odd victory is, the more we celebrate … the more the officials enjoy because it gives them a fresh lease of life in an office that they don’t deserve
If the past is anything to go by — and it is — we would have been gloating over this or that, and those walking the PCB corridors would have been settling down for another long innings. Nobody would have bothered about the ills affecting the system. That is an absolutely Pakistani trait not confined to sports and definitely not confined to cricket alone.
The recent string of losses in both cricket and hockey, frankly speaking, came as a surprise to no one. After all, the national outfits have been on a downward slide for some time on the world stage, and nobody gives them much of a chance or hold high hopes as they embark on this tour or that.
Contrary to general perception, however, the basic fault lies not with the players, but with the system— or the lack of it — that pervades all other spheres of national activity. Take education, health, economy, governance, anything; characteristics of the system remain pretty much the same: absence of institutions, absence of accountability, ad-hocism, nepotism, across-the-board frivolity, lack of understanding and, on top of it all, a serious lack of intent to understand, perform and deliver.
PCB practices all of it and then some more. Every now and then there is some freak individual heroic that saves the skin of those calling the shots.
The only difference in the realm of sports is that, unlike most other sectors of national life, it has an easy scapegoat; the players who take the flak while the administrators continue to make hay because for them the proverbial sun continues to shine, which is such a pity.
The chiefs do get some uncomfortable moments, but the bureaucracy continues. Whoever may be heading the PCB at any given point in time, the one running the show remain the same; a selector would join the academy, an advisor would start looking after domestic affairs, and somebody doing nothing would be made a member of the Board of Governors. In short, the faces remain the same while holding different offices. It’s a system failure, pure and simple.
Come to think of it, among the segments in our society that have played a major part in making Pakistan a well-recognised country in the world, sports has always been among the top few. Post-9/11 we have an entirely different identity and surely a lot more people know Pakistan today than ever, but that is beyond the scope of these lines.
Since the very beginning, sports took us where nothing could. It was hockey and squash in the early years that introduced the country across the world, and they were followed not much later by cricket and subsequently by bridge, snooker, boxing and even sailing in which Pakistani sportsmen excelled, winning regional and international laurels that earned recognition and goodwill for the country.
The thread running through all these success stories, however, was that of individual talent. From Hanif and Fazal to Wasim and Waqar; from Shahnaz and Islah to Hasan and Hanif; and from Hashim and Roshan to Jahangir and Jansher, none of them — and, of course, the scores of others who can’t be named here individually — was thrown up by the system; they all made it big on the basis of their natural skill, individual effort and even personal investment in terms of initial training and grooming.
Aisamul Haq, who represents one of the major — if not the only — positive story in Pakistani sports in recent times, is no exception on this count. Pakistan Tennis Federation can surely take no credit at all for what Aisam has been able to achieve on the circuit.
There has never been any concrete effort to have a system that may harness the natural talent. Even the highest offices in the land poke their mighty nose in the affairs of the various federations and associations, but all that is done for the sake of accommodating the blue-eyed.
Beyond that, there is little concern for anything else. The net result is that instead of producing giants, the boards and the federations are churning out pygmies and using them as scapegoats to continue enjoying the goodies themselves.
Had the decline been confined to one area, we could have called it bad performance. Had it been so bad in a few games, we could have called it a coincidence. But the massive decline is no coincidence. The malaise definitely runs much deeper. And it is the same malady that plagues our very existence as a nation. By the same token, the cure has to be the same: put in place long-term systems that shall be professional and accountable. Having a new chief selector is not what it takes to set things right; especially when he happens to be someone who has been away from the domestic scene in recent times.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 24th, 2016
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