"Your Razia Sultana from Korangi has brought us laurels." I received an enthusiastic phone call from Mirza Nadeem Baig, an old friend. He is essentially a cricket buff but very disappointed these days by the sharp decline in the performance of the national team. Shahid Afridi's fall from grace has further embittered him. "What the heck was he doing? Biting the ball or biting the dust?" I found an opportunity to propound my theory of impatience and its corollary, the Twenty20 cricket. It is three things that bring us together as a nation even after being terribly fragmented – one, unending betrayal by our leadership, two, dust and three, impatience. Perhaps impatience is the very reason that makes most Pakistanis fail to remember Hanif Mohammed as the role model who could stay on the crease for days and pile up tons of runs in style. While virtually hit-and-run types like Shahid Afridi are celebrated, who on the one hand grow beards and preach morality to fellow citizens by saying their prayers even on the field, and on the other, bring shame to themselves and their country by cheating and ball-tampering. But impatience is reflected everywhere, both in our social attitudes and in the political understanding of events in a nascent democracy like ours.
Cricket is a game of patience and it is ironic that a society which is addicted to cricket is so impatient. Many years ago, arch journalist Zafar Iqbal Mirza (Lahori), himself a cricket enthusiast, commented on the criticism on test cricket from some quarters, who were promoting short, limited-over matches as the only worthwhile form of the game. I recall that he wrote in his popular column in a national newspaper that test cricket is like classical music. It doesn't need approval of those who sing in other genres. But tests we lose uninterruptedly while being world champions of Twenty20 matches. When 600 shots are made each day, one random boundary could make the short-sighted rulers proffer gold coins
to the performers.
Every other sport is neglected in Pakistan including the so-called national game of hockey and the most popular international sport football. Athletics, swimming and some other sports are faster and have a different feel about them. But every sport requires a lot of patience and concentration in players when they prepare, practise and work out. It is tough to be an athlete, a sprinter, a marathon runner, a cyclist or a boxer. Time is spent on physical training and inculcating the correct mental attitude. The Pakistani state has offered limited resources for educating its children and young people or for their physical and emotional wellbeing through investing in culture and sports.
In this scenario, it must have taken so much for a young woman from Korangi's working-class neighbourhood of Karachi to rise up and become the fastest woman of South Asia. Naseem Hameed, 22, made us all proud by winning the gold for hundred-metre sprint in the South Asian games held at Dhaka. She and her coach Maqsood Ahmed deserve praise for the glory they have brought to this nation. Some other colleagues of Naseem in the Pakistan contingent also performed well and must have shamed the more celebrated, overrated and overpaid cricketers. Many years ago, I wrote a poem on the life of an industrious working woman from Korangi and titled it Razia Sultana because to me such women are our real queens and princesses. Baig remembered that poem when rejoicing at Naseem's feat.
The writer is a poet and advises national and international institutions on governance and public policy issues. Email: harris spopk.org