Masood Hasan
It was John Keats who said, “Oh, what ails thee, knight at arms, alone and palely loitering; though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing.” We shall not be found ailing. We shall not moan and groan and lament about things which roll on inexplicably. We shall not think about the lonely knight and wonder what brought him to that derelict lake. Therefore, while this New Year vow – absolutely meant to be broken – all but takes care of everything under the sun, let us, just for a mere few minutes, include that great pantomime we call, for reasons no one quite knows, Pakistani cricket.
After that ageless two-some comedy show Alif Noon, it is easily the funniest national show we have ever conceived – and let’s not be modest. We have kicked up quite an incredible list in our time.
But before that weird drama, which unfolds endlessly down under, let us at least get rid of a few bogies. This business of “great natural talent” that’s oozing from every testosterone-driven youngster who sees visions at a mere sighting of bats and balls is a lot of poppycock. It might – just might – have an iota of truth in it, but for how many more decades should we swear blind allegiance to what is, after all, just an abstract concept?
For years and years, the pundits and apologists have shouted from rooftops, pulpits and whatever high ground they could clamber up, that on a good day there is just nobody that comes near the Pakistani cricket gringos. And for years and years, an unhappy, increasingly skeptical and disenfranchised nation, searching in vain for that thin silver lining, has greedily swallowed that hopeless pill, hoping for the miracle that was never ever there to start with.
Why can’t we exorcise this ethereal talent that we are flush with and take a reality check? But, no, we can can’t; because deep down we are all hopeless optimists, and, besides, what else is there to hope for? We put all our precious dreams into the world’s leakiest ship. When it goes under after the first mild squall that comes its way, we throw up our hands in horror and close our eyes in anguish.
No, the sad fact is that we have as much talent as a hedgehog taking Latin classes. And even if we had the entire world’s talent right here, on our palms, we should all know that talent without application is nothing – an illusion at best and a false prophet that one should not follow. And if there is this great reservoir of talent bubbling under our feet, why haven’t we ever seen it for more than a few seconds? Why is it more illusionary than anything else?
The answer is simple. It’s a great convenience – a wonderful fallback position when things wrong, as they do with clockwork precision. What better thing to hang your soiled overalls on than the peg of great talent not nurtured properly? Cricketing countries with far lower levels of talent perform far better than we ever do. No one in Pakistani cricket is remotely interested in the long run, the system, the method. It is instant results, instant gratification and instant reward. When things go wrong, blame it on an abstract and slink away, only to return in a new disguise.
In the 70s we had the “best team on paper.” That was the official credo. On paper? Is that a joke? What good is a team on paper? But ours was, and there it stayed – on paper – while we lost matches we had won. Three and more decades later, the players have changed, most of the managements too have changed (though you’d be hard put to tell them apart), and the same pathetic results stare us in the face. That’s why we can turn Sydney on its head and carve out an incredible defeat from a victory for the asking.
Now, that requires talent, and if that is what we actually mean by talent, yes, we have it by the bucketful. It was Zia Moheyuddin who said many summers ago, when we had successfully wrested an impossible defeat from a simple victory against the “goras,” that “defeat was our destiny.” Truer words were never spoken. In Sydney, we did not need Zia Moheyuddin to tell us anything. So, please, till the cows do come home, can we please, please drop the talent caper?
And that leaves only one more bogey. A national passion. I am sorry, but cricket is not it. Making money might be one, living in misery might be another, but this peculiar game is not. What kind of passion is this which has no following in any real sense of the word? Let us not confuse real cricket with the T20 or T10 or T5 circuses that are current and on their way. That is not cricket – that is a glorified high-financed gilli-danda tamasha, where the common pleasure is appealing to the basest instinct.
No refined taste required here, and none asked for. The hordes turn up in great numbers for a few hours of punch-packed ballgame on roller-skates. They will scream their heads off, bay like wolves and jump like baboons, but cricket it is not. Come the Test matches and the stadiums are yawning from one end round to the other, with not a soul in sight. As Imran Khan put it, if I have it right, “more players than spectators, more policemen than both, and one stray dog thrown in for good measure.”
The great domestic circuit, or circus, as it should be called, has as much lustre as a cake of dung, and less utility. Empty grounds, boring games and a foreboding sense of purposelessness. This achieved after 60 years and more in the business. This system will produce nothing, and even if it could be made to by forced C-section, there are marauding cricket boards run, as they must always be, on ad hoc basis (which means no questions need to be replied) who plant the kiss of death on whoever is able to rise above the scum.
So the creaking edifice lurches from one end to the other, tottering perpetually on the brink of disintegration while men at the top driven by hubris, greed, paranoid, lucre – whatever is the going flavour – simply carry on without shame, remorse or responsibility. One freak victory ensures the system props them up for a dozen defeats. And so the monkey cart goes on. Relentless and regardless.
Cricket can only be relevant if we can start somewhere and inject some relevance, some reality into our daily lives – such as we have. It is a long, uphill task, and most of us are not capable of doing anything tangible while we are at it – perhaps the more brash younger set might, seeing that tradition is not going to cut much ice with them, but who knows if they survive the cesspool of mediocrity in which we spend more time than we should.
One of the key announcements that airlines coming in from overseas are ordered to broadcast as you are preparing to land at any Pakistani airport is that “at Pakistani airports, all kinds of photography is prohibited.” This in the age of Google maps, satellite hi-res photography and hi-tech imagery. Makes you wonder if the monkeys ever left?