Some lessons from the Caribbean win
A week after the West Indians wrapped themselves with glory in their own inimitable style and manner, there is hardly a point to make even a mention of it except that this was one more glimpse of the larger argument about why the team is so crucial to the world of cricket. When the West Indians win, everyone wins with them.
Their skills — whenever they are able to put them on display — are so breathless, and their celebrations — whenever they match the occasion — are so uninhibited and original that the whole thing becomes contagious. May the tribe grow and sustain itself!
The bitterness underlining the friction between the players and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) raised its ugly head at the awards presentation ceremony and the post-match events. It is here that we, in Pakistan, have a lesson to learn. The West Indians used their friction to raise their game and expressed their frustration once they had redeemed themselves on the field. Pakistanis tend to do it the other way round, going public with their frustration — justified or otherwise — without making things work on the ground.
The West Indians used their friction to raise their game and expressed their frustration once they had done well on the field. We do it the other way round
The ill-conceived Shahid Afridi show is a recent and relevant example of it. Before leaving for India, he made public statements and invited prime ministerial intervention into cricketing affairs. He went there, didn’t do much to be noticed, did a lot to suggest that he was not good enough, came back and used the social media to seek forgiveness. It all reeked of showmanship when all he needed to do was to focus on the assignment in the first phase, and introspection in the second. But if he couldn’t do his ‘star man’ stunt on the field — with his tummy almost bursting out from his waistline — he thought he would pull off his ‘star man on the sofa’ stunt to extend his tenure as a player.
“I am here to answer to you,” he was seen saying in the video. “... I seek forgiveness from you because the hopes you had from me and my team, I could not live up to them.” His body language was anything but apologetic, and the mass reaction it attracted on various websites where either the video or its content was shared was harsh and sarcastic. The Boom Boom stunt rather boomeranged.
Come to think of it, what exactly was he seeking forgiveness for? For not living up to expectations? But the team he led actually came up to the expectations, and that, indeed, was the problem. People with any degree of sanity and logic pasted over their patriotism never thought the team was going to do anything big.