Senegal done enough to put Africa on football map: SWINGING DRIVES

BY THE time this column appears in print, we will know whether South Korea or Germany is in the final of the Football World Cup. We will not know the fate of the other semi-final, Brazil against Turkey. No England or Spain or Italy nor Portugal, not even Argentine. All sent packing and I have no regrets at all. It was unfortunate that Senegal had to clash with Turkey but Senegal has done enough to put Africa on the football map of the world. But bravo Turkey! A team without mega-priced stars and pin-up boys who double as fashion models, Turkey was the tortoise in the race against the hare. It is a team that has stuck to the basics.

This has been such an incredible World Cup, who knows, it can be won by either Turkey or South Korea. The mind boggles but one is thrilled by the prospect. But the Football World Cup deserves an entire column and this I will write when it is over and I will once again bemoan the fact that no team from the subcontinent with a population of well over a billion people did not feature in the World Cup but Croatia did.

The pride of place in this column should have gone to Pakistan’s stirring performance in the Super Challenge in Australia. Pakistan did not beat Australia in the ‘decider’, it blew it away. Gone was Australia’s cockiness and arrogance and foul-mouthing of its opponents. Cricket is a team game and Pakistan’s was a team effort but the star of the show was Shoaib Akhtar.

There have been Larwood and Voce before World War-2 and since then there have been Lindwall, Miller, Truman, Tyson and of course, a pride of West Indian greats, Wesley Hall, Charlie Griffith, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Malcolm Marshal, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose. Shoaib Akhtar, one hopes, will become a member of this very elite club. At the GABBA, he bowled fast, he bowled straight and he swung the ball and just to show that there was a little boy in him, he bounced a couple that sailed over the head of Rashid Latif and might well have gone for six byes. The Australian batsmen were petrified.

Shoaib Akhtar has had a stormy career. He has been called for ‘chucking’, he has had fitness problems, he has had quarrels with team managements and with himself. If ever the term ‘loose cannon’ can be applied to a cricketer, it can be applied to him. Many had wearied of his tantrums but one person kept faith with him and that was the PCB Chairman, Lt.-General Tauqir Zia. I have had innumerable discussions with him about Shoaib Akhtar. At one stage, he said jokingly that he would put him under my personal charge and I told him that I had troubles enough of my own for me to look after a tempestuous character like Shoaib Akhtar. But his faith in him never wavered. He brought in Dr Tauseef to get him fit and keep him fit. He sent him to Australia for correcting his bowling action. He took on the ICC and had Shoaib Akhtar cleared. I can imagine his elation when Shoaib Akhtar destroyed Australia and how vindicated he felt. Shoaib Akhtar owes his success to his considerable talent but owes much to the PCB, Chairman.

I think Pakistan has now got its World Cup squad, adding Abdul Razzaq and Saqlain Mushtaq to it. With this squad already settled, there would be no harm if the players are rotated so that they are properly rested and there is no burn-out. This would apply particularly to Shoaib Akhtar as well as Wasim Akram. The team must be kept physically fit and motivated.

The report of Justice Karamat Nazir Bhandari has been made public. I am not at all surprised at his findings. The report should bury once and for all, the match-fixing controversy. At the time when Pakistan lost to Bangladesh in the 1999 World Cup, there had been a chorus of allegations that Pakistan had ‘thrown’ the match. I had called this chorus of allegations, “the mindset of a lynch mob.”

It is extraordinary how little cooperation, Justice Bhandari received from the ICC and no cooperation at all from Ali Bacher who was the main accuser. Bacher, in fact, not only refused to appear but did not even acknowledge the correspondence. I think that Ali Bacher has a case of libel to answer. At least, the United Cricket Board of South Africa should apologise to the PCB for the highly irresponsible behaviour of its former chief executive and Ali Bacher made the wild accusations while he was chief executive.

As for the ICC’s much trumpeted and exorbitantly well paid Anti-Corruption Unit, all they could come up with was an article in Wisden on Bangladesh cricket, a tiny mouse out of the mighty mountain of effort. Anyhow, this sordid chapter is now closed though the Cricket World Cup is coming up next year and one never knows who will creep out of the woodwork and start to make allegations. Strange, the Football World Cup has been free of such accusations even though fancied teams have been knocked over like nine-pins. And it is cricket that is a gentleman’s game!

Urdu prospers in Northern Areas

COULD anyone have visualized before 1947 that Urdu would be a popular language in the Northern Areas of Pakistan within the next 50 years, and mushairas could be held in the valleys just beneath some of the highest mountain peaks of the world.

The Northern Areas Students Cultural Organization, drawing its strength from the Arts Faculty of the University of Karachi, surprised everyone present at its get-together recently and some surprising revelations were made there. Aslam Nadeem, a lecturer in Pakistan Studies in a Northern Area college, was the main speaker. His talk awakened a great deal of interest.

First, let us go through the peculiarities of the area. The British, after having sold the state of Jammu and Kashmir for six million rupees, annexed the Northern Areas in view of their strategic importance. They positioned themselves in an area which was close to the Wakhan belt - the thin strip of the Afghan territory - separating Kashmir from the then USSR. Another reason was to guard the Silk Route from encroachment. This is the reason that, with the dawn of freedom, the Gilgit Scouts lost no time in seizing control of the area and declaring it to be a part of Pakistan on November 15, 1947. Baltistan became free in 1948. By 1951 the 28,000 square miles of Northern Areas became an integral part of Pakistan.

Urdu had no place in this area’s scheme of things, except for those militiamen who had learnt it through the Roman Script to communicate with their British officers. So it was with the emergence of Pakistan that Urdu became the medium of instruction in schools and its popularity spread so fast that now every school-going boy or girl trekking towards his or her school has to be well-conversant with Urdu. It is next to the mother-tongue status - the first language in actual sense.

There is a sizable number of students from the Northern Areas in Karachi. One comes across Gilgit, Skardu, Hunza and Nagar boys and girls, and the Pakistan Study Centre at Karachi University is one of the favourite departments of the students from the Northern Areas. They are a well-behaved lot causing no problems at all. The Karachiites will be surprised to know that when it comes to written Urdu the average Gilgiti, Balti or Hunzai proves to be a better communicator in Urdu than most of the Karachi boys and girls. This fact is fair enough to prove that the myth of automatic proficiency in the mother tongue is a myth. All languages are learnt the same way and the natural advantages of mother tongue learners soon melt away when the rules of grammar and composition are to be mastered.

Northern Areas students in Karachi hold their small cultural gatherings. With the majority of them being a little shy, they don’t wait for invitation from the established literary Anjumans of the city. They are contented with their own Anjumans and their own audiences. Shina, Wakhi, Khuwar and Broshiski poetry is also recited in these mushairas. One can see that the Northern Areas cultural assertion is the latest phenomenon and it goes to add to the city’s cosmopolitan character.

Whatever is happening in Karachi among the Shina, Balti, Wakhi, Khuwar and Broshiski-speaking intellectuals it has a solid support from the North. They are used to Urdu mehfils back home. It is only natural that it is like picking up threads in Karachi when they throw themselves headlong into similar activities here.

Quite a few speakers, besides Aslam Nadeem, talked on the state of Urdu poetry in the Northern Areas; now the students of a primary school of a village named Zayan — 250 kilometres from the LoC — begin their day with Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua Ban Ke Tamanna Meri and this Urdu song resounds through the whole valley. This is true of all the villages in the Northern Areas. Everywhere in the Northern Areas Urdu is the medium of instruction. Urdu weeklies and monthlies are being published. The first Urdu weekly of the area was Siachin, brought out in 1980, and then came Shumal and Baade Shumal, Wadi-i-Skardu and K-2. Monthly Himalaya and Shaoor are Urdu literary magazines. Recently, weekly Naqqara has begun publication. Important journalists of the area are mostly men of letters; e.g., Bahadur Ali Salik, Qasim Nasim, Zafar Hayat Pal, Abid Abdullah, Saadat Ali Mujahid, Raja Husain Khan Maqpoon and Syed Aijaz Husain.

Among Urdu poets who have earned a name for themselves are Wazir Ashraf, Irfan Mohammed, Pir Naseer Chalasi, Naseeruddin Hunzai - almost a father-figure of the area Maulana Abdul Baqi, Sufi Sultan Feroz, Muzaffar Ali Muzaffar, Raja Shah Rais Khan, Shah Khan, Prof Usman Ali, Hamidullah Baig, Fida Ali Isar, Mohammed Hasan Shah, Ghulamuddin Ghulam Hunzai, Fazlur Rahman Alamgir, Maulana Raji, Rahmat, Abdul Hameed Khawar, Shamim Baltistani, Brig Zakir Shamim, Shakir Shamim, Hashmat Kamal Ilhami, Mohammed Amin Zia, Amjad Ali Amjad, Farman Ali Khayal, Asad Shah Zaidi, Khushi Mohammed Tariq, Iqbal Aasi, Inayatullah Shumali.

The poets whose anthologies of Urdu poetry have appeared are also many. Ehsan Shah Habibur Rahman, Mohammed Zaheer Sahar, Zeeshan Quaidabadi, Ehsan Ali Danish, Aslam Husain Sahar, Abdul Rashid Arshad, Asif Nawaz, Imran Shah Anjum, Abdus Salam Naz, Ishtiaq Ahmed Yaad, Abdul Mannan Abd and Ahmed Saleem Saleemi are some of the poets who have published their collections of poetry and are sought-after poets. Now no festival or celebration is complete without a mushaira; and it is under the snow-capped high peaks of the Himalayas that Urdu ghazal and nazm have found its new haven, what a glorious setting. Perhaps the Northern Areas and Kashmir provide the ideal landscape which is in itself akin to Urdu poet’s Mehbooba (beloved).

Naseeruddin Hunzai, the most prominent intellectual of Hunza area, told me some time ago that not before long the Northern Areas would be known for producing very good Urdu poets. At present Mohsin Changezi, a Hazara tribal poet, is regarded as one of the most talented young Urdu poets. One of the reasons being that Urdu poetry tends to reward those of its practitioners more who have a good grounding in Persian. In the Northern Areas the language of the elite and aristocracy, insofar as cultural expression is concerned, is Persian; hence one is taken by surprise by the imagery of Northern Areas’ poets. It sounds so musical and sweet that it easily wins over lovers of the traditional diction of Urdu poetry.

A recent mushaira in the valley below the world-famous Rakaposhi peak outdid the Lucknow style of mushairas. A participant described its grandeur in the following words. “Even the full moon, stuck as the crown on the Rakaposhi head, was presenting the Aadab in the Lucknow style, and the whole valley seemed intoxicated with the mushaira grandeur.”

I have never been to the Northern Areas, but after going through books on poetry and culture coming from this region I feel that the imagination of poets and writers of the area is blossoming to their fullest potential. A Rakaposhi flavour indeed!