 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
|
 |
| Welcome Ijaz Butt sahib |
|
|
|
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Masood Hasan
The one and only time I met the great cricket czar, Dr Nasim Ashraf, he asked me for some advice since I was so well-versed in the business of cricket. While hastily correcting his wrong impression about my cricketing expertise – I told him I had none, I added that advice is generally not accepted by people you are advising and least of all when it is free. At this point Dr Ashraf, master of all he surveyed, immediately offered me a consultancy, which I politely and happily declined. However when further pressed I said to the good Doctor that he should never forget that the chair he was occupying would more than likely lead to a inglorious exit and everlasting shame – I did remind him that others had fared no better. Before I left – the meeting was just about 15 minutes in all, I did say that it would be best if he stayed away as much as possible from the media and the players because there was no percentage in either.
Of course the net effect this had on Dr Ashraf was the exact opposite. He was in and out of the player's dressing rooms and showers, forever at nets with them and shooting the breeze, donned the cricket kit in no time at all and became one of the boys. He was forever with the media and talking non stop on everything under the sun. For him, like for many, cricket was a high and his own dismal cricket record, an incentive to bat against the Pakistan team and hit fours off obliging bowlers. Since he had an ego that was larger than this country's geographical dimensions, he had to be in the limelight at all times, flashing his beaming smile and working his considerable skills of BS on all who touched base with him.
He has melted away into the shadows and left the PCB in tatters, its considerable wealth frittered away on lost causes, luxury lifestyles and suing the players and whoever came into his blinkered vision. The PCB coffers have bled under him and the status of the team and indeed the country is at an all time low. Pakistan cricket is twice as dead as Pakistan tourism which means in simpler English, that it is indeed very, very dead. He will not be held accountable where there is more talk and little justice. He will not be charge sheeted for all the many dishonours he levied upon the players, the administrators who did not tow his line and above all, the hurt to ordinary spectators who lead lives of such misery that cricket is the only high they ever experience. The fact that in 2008 Pakistan has not played a single test speaks highly of the Doctor's considerable skills. And anyone who can name the current Pakistan squad will ensure his name goes down in the history books. The only good thing is that Dr Ashraf is gone, vaporised either to his beloved USA or to some other hunting grounds where undoubtedly he will find more suckers willing to buy his great humanitarian schemes and his self-claimed fame as a cricket administrator.
It is now understandable why the blighted PCB constitution took ages coming out because draft after draft was being tampered with to grant the chairman absolute powers and make him into a demi-god answerable to no one. As it is, that document had taken far too long to get ready because ad-hocism meant you could play ducks and drakes till the cows came home. Not satisfied with the powers that he already had, he wanted more and more and more and when these were granted by a spineless and self-serving bunch of officials, the constitution came about. But 'there's a tide in the affairs of men,' and Dr Ashraf did not last long enough to taste the sordid fruits of this aberration. He was bad for Pakistan cricket and he chose himself over everything else. Now he is a bad memory and his departure and that of his beloved NCHD has gone into the history books. How long will it take to mend all the fences he has broken or mutilated remains to be seen?
Into this quagmire steps Mr Ijaz Butt, no stranger to cricket or its accompanying intrigues. He has a greedy ministry of sports which has systematically destroyed all sports, made us the laughing stock of the world and now wants to put its tainted paws into the honey pot. If they should succeed, we should hand cricket over to Mulla Omar and his band of merry men. Mr Butt has one hell of a task ahead of him. He is still surrounded by the remnants of the old guard who saw nothing wrong with the way this great sport was raped daily and they must have already changed their colours and become Mr Butt's most loyal and devoted servants. There is the team, a hotch potch collection of yahoos who can't carry themselves with any dignity and who's performances in the field are best left alone. There is the PCB itself, still reeling from the Ashraf-onslaught, there are contracts and tenders that were given at will without so much as a token sign of corporate responsibility and there is the country itself, racked by terrorism, its government looking more and more like something the cat brought in, its finances in the doldrums, its international reputation in smithereens and no one in the wide world wishing to come to its shores and then the public, those who live their dreams through the super stars of the game, who have sat and watched the carnage and shut their eyes in horror. All this and more is a formidable mountain to climb and one narrates this merely to put some perspective on the way things are.
There can be no advice for Mr Ijaz Butt. He is a well-respected and seasoned man who is not greedy because he is not a charlatan and a crook, who has enough money of his own and who comes from a family that has built its considerable reputation by hard work and ability. The good thing is that cricket has fallen so low, it cannot really fall lower than this so there should only be one way to go and that is up – but it is a grind and Mr Butt cannot fix it overnight. He must play it by the book, avoid sycophants like the plague and separate chalk from cheese. The game is crying out for reform at every level. There is no time for half-baked miracle cures. The structure of cricket about which some of us have permanently sore throats needs serious and quality evaluation. The roots of the game's revival lie in the abundance of raw talent that rises and falls because of a foul system of rewarding mediocrity and ignoring talent. Most of all Mr Butt needs to build a team of administrators who have no vested interest other than making this country stand besides others without looking at their shoe laces.
The chief executives of other cricket boards are hardly heard and seen even less. Mr Butt should roll up his sleeves and get to work and give interviews when there is something tangible to report and where he can talk not in the future tense but in the present. Pakistan cricket is not dead. It's in coma and it can be brought back to life. Here's wishing Mr Ijaz Butt bon voyage and may the force be with him.
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
