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Giving Islam a bad name
PCB, lady doctor and what not THIS is with reference to Zafar Samdani’s column Lahore and Beyond of October 27. I have been reading Mr Samdani’s columns on various topics with fair amount of interest and found most of them interesting. However, I was disappointed to read his column on cricket affairs of Pakistan. Firstly, perhaps, his sources of information have not been fair to him. He seems to have only scanty knowledge of cricket and certainly not of a level that could entitle him to offer expert’s comments. He should have known that Sir Don Bradman had not played any Test cricket in the last 50 years, the period he is talking about. Secondly, quite a few of the players he has mentioned have not always batted at the number three position. Even Sir Don Bradman used to come at two-down quite often. Similarly, Viv Richards too was not a regular number three batsman. He played at two-down in a number of Test matches, while Kallicharan occupied the number three spot. As far as Ijaz Ahmed is concerned, he had a very erratic record in the late ’90s. In the series against South Africa in 1997-98, he scored a total of 75 runs in three Tests and was dropped for the next year’s series against Australia. In 1998-99, while on tour in India, he scored a paltry 53 runs in six innings against the home side. And then he had never been a regular one-down batsman as he played at positions from No 1 to No 6. On his day, no doubt, Ijaz Ahmed was a ‘master’ craftsman and literally hammered the bowling. Zafar Samdani is right in saying that sending Shoaib Malik and Razzaq at number three was a folly as they did not have the required quality for this important position. However, this was the decision of the coach and the captain on the spot. By the way, Abdul Razzaq had scored a century at this spot only a couple of years back! General Tauqir has made many a mistake but, at the same time, we must acknowledge his good work and also remember that making a team play in the field or picking the final line-up for a particular match is not the job of the CE of the Board. After all, there is a tour selection committee and the coach, captain, manager, etc, also have some responsibilities in this regard. Even the selection of teams for tours is not among his assigned jobs as there is a selection committee to select the team. If the team performed poorly in Tangiers or Kenya, what could the Chairman do, sitting thousands of miles away from the scene of action? To be fair to him, when compared to that of many of his predecessors, his performance in the service of Pakistan has been much better. What the Pakistan team had been doing in the distant past was not the reflection of good administrators at PCB, but the result of some outstanding individual performances of the players. How can one forget the mess created by the Board after successful tours of England (1992) and New Zealand (1992-93) under the captaincy of Javed Miandad, when the men in-charge of national cricket got involved in politics and removed a successful captain just to put Wasim Akram in his place. Subsequent events provided ample evidence of the correctness or otherwise of this action. The fact is that mistakes have been committed by almost all previous cricket controlling bodies in Pakistan, including those headed by such big names like A.R.Cornelius, A.H.Kardar or Air Marshall Noor Khan. Teams have performed poorly in all countries. Unfortunately, we have never taken defeats in the right spirit. I think we should remain calm in hours of crisis and think coolly. Let us enjoy more columns from the pen of Zafar Samdani on art and culture, which is his forte. M. ISHRAT Karachi | ||
THIS is with reference to Anjum Niaz’s article, Cause celebre or girl interrupted, of November 17. By washing her dirty linen in public, Taslima Nasrin has conveniently won the limelight in the West. Her having suffered because of a certain kind of understanding (or misunderstanding) of Islam is indeed unfortunate, and it gives rise to two implications. One, that her experience is only a single way in which Islam is practised, and, thus, before denouncing Islam as a whole, she should exercise her brain cells to try and understand what the real Islam is about.|
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