NOT all that long ago Pakistan’s cricket team was not so much a disgrace as an embarrassment. You watched them play, or rather watched them go through their antics, and it was a problem deciding where to hide your head. You squirmed and under your breath cursed ‘louts’ and ‘yahoos’ — at least my favourite words when describing our cricketing heroes.

That was then, the dark ages of Pakistani cricket when an impressive-looking military man, a serving lieutenant-general no less, was lord and master of the cricketing establishment. (He even managed to get one of his sons, talented no doubt, into the national side. What’s become of the lad?) But this is now and within the space of a few years we have seen a mighty transformation: a tawdry and almost squalid thing turned into beaten gold.

I didn’t catch the whole of the third test against India, only snatches of it on the fourth day when, with a day to spare and 341 runs behind, the Indian team was all bowled out. What a game. I kept dabbing my eyes with tissue paper, this being the kind of emotional high this game produced.

So amidst all the gloom and doom, there being plenty of both on the national horizon, something at last to cheer about. Balochistan, Wana, Bajaur, the pantomime played out over that never-to-be-built Kalabagh dam, national morale as a result of all these events at an all-time low and then the pure joy of this match. We badly needed it. How much bad news can anyone stand?

And you know how this change in the performance level of the cricket team has come about? By letting everyone connected with cricket get on with his job: the chairman of the board lightly presiding, the chief selector selecting, the coach coaching and the captain not being told how to lead his team. We have had two great captains of cricket before: Kardar and Imran. Into their illustrious company now comes a third: Inzimam.

During the dark ages this guy, to save his life, couldn’t run between the wickets. Now he leads his team from the front and does so quietly, in an understated style without undue flamboyance, invariably making it a point to stress the team effort behind every win. Individual brilliance is all very well and we had more than our share of it at all times. What we lacked was team spirit which we now have, thanks to the present set-up, from chairman to coach to captain. Long may this last and may it bring us greater trophies.

Come to think of it, the national cricket team is about the only role model the nation can look up to at present, the only thing which doesn’t induce depression. Think of the Q-League, Ch Shujaat Hussain and Ch Pervaiz Elahi in all their glory and you ask yourself what we have done to deserve them. Take in the national landscape from Balochistan to Waziristan and your heart sinks.

Then watch Shoaib Akhtar, Muhammad Asif, Abdul Razzaq and Danish Kaneria bowl and Kamran Akmal bat and your spirits lift. And the thought crosses your mind, if we can be this good at cricket why not in other fields?

The short answer to this is that what through luck or design we have managed in cricket we haven’t in other fields. Sporting analogies should not be carried into other spheres. But certain principles of organization remain the same, whether on the cricket ground or even the battlefield.

Politically the nation is stuck in a groove because the army is simply not willing to loosen its grip on national politics. When Lt Gen Tauqir Zia was cricket tsar, cricket was in a mess. And it would still be in a mess if after Tauqir another serving general was put in charge. The first condition of success in any endeavour — cricketing, thieving, bank-robbing — is to be able to breathe freely. With a general off its back, Pakistan cricket is able to breathe freely, which is why out of uncertainty and chaos a discipline has evolved and a team has been fashioned.

Ironic, isn’t it? There should have been more unity and discipline in cricket under the baton of a serving general. There wasn’t. The nation should have been more united and cohesive after six years and four months of military rule. It isn’t.

Generals are great believers in ‘unity-of-command’ and, when stumped for answers, mouth this phrase as an all-purpose mantra. They forget two things.

Firstly, unity of command is vital for every organization, civil or military. Lines of authority even in a family are clearly drawn. If they weren’t, there would be confusion. This is one of the principal problems we face at the moment, military rule making nonsense of constitutional authority.

When Inzimam steps into the field he looks his own man. He is not looking over his shoulder and, right or wrong, he takes his own decisions. Can we say the same about Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his government? That they are marionettes, their strings pulled from above, we all know but they also look it. So even if they were able to perform well they can’t because they lack authority in their domain.

Secondly, unity of command does not nullify delegation of authority. A corporation boss leads from the top, doesn’t go around interfering on the shop floor. Never was this principle more flouted than during the Musharraf period, the army with its finger in everything. Far from leading to all-round improvement, to no one’s surprise this has resulted in all-round mayhem.

Imagine the state of national cricket if there was only one person laying claim to infallibility, one person directing everything: selecting, coaching and leading the team in the field. Cricket would be back to where it was just a couple of years ago.

But at the national level we have one person who is everything: president, commander-in-chief, chief overseer of national security, chief diplomat and leading expert on water and power and the necessity of big dams. Any decision and it has to come from him. Applied to cricket, this organizational principle would sow disaster in the sporting arena. Applied to politics and the direction of national affairs, what results can we expect?

Tailpiece: Arbab Ghulam Rahim, the Sindh chief minister, is as much a creature of this hybrid system as Ch Pervaiz Elahi, the Punjab chief minister. But by openly opposing the Kalabagh dam, Arbab Rahim has grown in stature and begun to look like a man with a mind of his own. Ch Pervaiz, in contrast, has added another dimension to political loyalty by saying that whether elections are held in 2007 or 2008, Gen Musharraf would be elected as president for another five years “in uniform”. Talk of devotion above and beyond the call of duty, which surely gives rise to the thought that there is definitely something wrong with the genetic programming of Punjab.

If having Pervaiz Elahi as political overlord of Punjab is bad enough, having him as culture tsar of the province is little short of disastrous. We have him to thank for the New Murree Project which is destined to destroy some of the oldest forests in the province. He has encroached upon land belonging to the Lahore Zoo in order to expand the entrance of his new office at the Free Mason’s Lodge. The land so occupied was part of the parking lot of the zoo where, among other uses, children’s buses would stand. (Why a chief minister should take over the Free Mason’s Lodge, especially when he has several other swanky offices, is another matter.) And now he has laid the foundation stone of a new building for the Punjab assembly set to come up behind the present building at a cost of several hundred crore rupees. The House of Commons can’t seat all its 600-plus members at any one time, which is why on important occasions members are seen standing on the sides. Yet no one has suggested that a new House of Commons be built. But for the present toothless Punjab assembly, of no use to man or beast, a new building at huge expense is being constructed. Why do we do such things?