No-ball troika from Pakistan: Presumed Innocent?

By John Cheeran
This is the month of Ramadan. Three Pakistani cricketers ---captain Salman Butt, fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir -- on Thursday said they were innocent and the rest of the world, I mean, The News of The World is torturing them. May be, they are not lying.
Pakistan is a colourful nation and often that colour is blood red. I remember that during the last cricket World Cup in 2007, held in the West Indies, Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer was found murdered. The team manager, then faced with a moral crisis, said while facing the global media that he asked his players to swear on Koran, by placing their hands on the book, that they had no role to play in the most foul murder. There was no incriminating video footage in the West Indies.
Here in London, nailed by the video footage, no such exercises are coming forth. Now the tagline is Presumed Innocent. Till yesterday Butt, Aamir and Asif were seen smiling but now they have said they are not in a mental frame to play cricket.
They are not suspended by the Pakistan Cricket Board. They are not dropped. They have simply walked away from the centre.
To argue that a brilliant bowler such as Aamer was not the cause but the consequence of circumstances and should not be banned for life from the game, as former England captain Mike Atherton has argued, is nothing but sophistry.
When you stray from the line, batsmen punish you. When you err, you get punished. Till now cricketers accused of colluding with bookies could wriggle out since there was no evidence of having taken money for falling in line with the bookies.
Here, for the first time, players are caught on camera along with the bookie, of accepting money. But Imran Khan, that opportunist par excellence, now wants the brilliance of young Aamir to be protected. Match-fixing and spot-fixing, too, need martyrs, Imran. Aamir, if he is found to be guilty, deserves no place on a cricket field in any form of game. Ditto for Butt and Asif.
Cricket’s problems stem from the fact that its administrators lack the will to take impartial and tough decisions. They need to serve the game, not the petty power and personal equations with in the respective national boards.
The spirit of forgiving should take a back seat this Ramadan.

When players are fixers

By John Cheeran
So what’s new? Match-fixing in cricket is old hat especially after Hansie Cronje was fixed by Delhi Police and all of us know cricketers, irrespective of nationalities and racial background, are willing to take the bait if you can up the stakes.
Yes, it’s a total disaster for Pakistan cricket and Pakistan the nation state. The News of The World expose has done more damage to Pakistan than the recent floods and possibly what an Indian nuclear attack could have done. It would take a long, long time for the credibility of Pakistani cricketers to be restored.
India, too, had dealt with the monster of match-fixing and who can tell how clean Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his band of men are? But, then, unless exposed and established otherwise we should believe in their integrity.
With video footage clearly showing some of the Pakistan players currently touring England accepting cash from a bookie, things are looking bleak for Salman Butt and guys.
Arguments that spot fixing is a bit of harmless fun and the result of the match is not influenced or determined by such transgressions will not hold much water since it’s question of integrity of the players involved. You can either be bought or cannot.
Will this recent spate of allegations drive fans away from cricket? Today, cricket is many things for many people. More than a sport, it’s a commercial circus and all those involved, television channels, sponsors, players, International Cricket Council, national cricket boards will do their level best to convince us that what’s being offered is genuine, unadulterated stuff.
And you watch at your own peril.
Long live cricket.

India-Pakistan cricket rivalry. Another run in Karachi.

By John Cheeran
In a few hours, India will play Pakistan at Karachi. Unlike in the past, neither India nor Pakistan is holding its collective breath over this preliminary Asia Cup game.
New Delhi is living through dramatic hours as the ruling UPA alliance is teetering on the brink of a nuclear meltdown occasioned by the intransigence of fundamentalist Marxists led by an incorruptible comrade Prakash Karat. Karat’s ideological stick has been hurting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a long time, and if India is going ahead with its nuclear deal with the great satan, the United States, the UPA government would collapse.
So cricket is being pushed aside for the moment with the MP-count becoming paramount in the game for survival as temperature shoots up in New Delhi.
A defeat to Pakistan today would not matter much, if the loser can win, and lift the Asia Cup, in the two more matches likely to follow between the neighbours as the tournament progresses.
That makes today’s skirmish in Karachi a low intensity sniping between two young sides, not yet scarred by cross-border cricket.
But if you are keeping count, India has already lost a final, Kitply Cup, to Pakistan. Though an inconsequential game, Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni knows that a false step in Karachi will make the score 0-2.
With the nation regurgitating the 1983 World Cup triumph only the other day, onus will be on Dhoni, who has been described as a refurbished avatar of Kapil Dev, and his emerging devils.

Youngistan and perils of losing to Pakistan on cricket field

By John Cheeran
Now that India has lost to Pakistan in the final of Kitply Cup by 25 runs we can all forget that limbering up in Mirpur, and now look forward to another round of skirmishes. Yes. Asia Cup is beckoning us in Pakistan.
As I had noted in an earlier post, reactions to the outcome of India-Pakistan cricket clashes are lacking the frisson of yesteryears. So, as the case was in India’s group stage victory and now the loss in the final, not many are bloody bothered.
Have we grown up as a nation of cricket watchers? I honestly do not suspect such transformation, though; definitely we are on the road to such a destination. In the first place you cannot jazz up anything that’s happening in Bangladesh. It was pretty much evident from the fact that not many Indian cricket reporters were keen to go to Mirpur, not even Dhaka, you see, in the first place.
After the ecstasy of the Indian Premier League (IPL) who cares for the plywood of Kitply Cup?
As in any sport, occasion does matter in cricket too. Kitply Cup turned out to be something quite similar to the exercise once we had in the Commonwealth Games cricket championship. It fizzled out to the relief of everyone involved in that, including Mr. Suresh Kalmadi.
But in all these, in victory and defeat, India’s captain and hero of our fleeting times, Mahendra Singh Dhoni should heed the lessons of Mirpur.
You should win, when it matters. Dhoni and the youngsters are, of course, unencumbered with the baggage of history when it comes to Pakistan. They are not a generation who were traumatized by the last ball-six by Javed Miandad off Chetan Sharma in the Australasia Cup final played in Sharjah. They were too young to be hit by that sixer.
Today a loss in a final against Pakistan does not lead to the burning of Dhoni’s house in Ranchi. Despite the defeat to Pakistan in the final in Mirpur, not a stone was cast at any homes of the cricketers.
But there is a threshold in the mind of an average Indian cricket fan. Sooner or later he or she will demand more. A nation’s woes that have been aggravated by rising oil price, and raging inflation, will forgive you only up to a point. So that only means losing to Pakistan in Pakistan during the Asia Cup will be asking for trouble. And by that time the pleasant distraction of the Euro Championship will be almost over.
Summer will be harsher. Pepsi sales will (or, ought to) soar. So Dhoni, representing the apolitical Youngistan, will have to drink deep from the pool of lost opportunities.

India thump Pakistan in Kitply Cup: Is it a new phase in India-Pakistan cricket clashes?

By John Cheeran
India recorded its biggest fifty-fifty international victory (by a margin of 140 runs) against neighbours Pakistan on Tuesday and it seems none seems bothered. At least, in India. The venue was Mirpur in Bangladesh and that makes the fratricide within the subcontinent complete. I remember another high scoring match played in Bangladesh at the end of the 90s when chasing Pakistan’s 300-plus score, India won thanks to a last over boundary by Hrishikesh Kanitkar. We all thought that was a memorable win.
On Tuesday, June 10, 2008, India scored 330 and won with astonishing ease employing what Times of India called a second line of attack which is quite true. And as statisticians point out, India stopped Pakistan’s 11-game (or is it 12?) winning streak orchestrated under an Aussie coach, Geoff Lawson.
But why the nation has stopped paying much attention? What should have been termed a historic (that is, if you go by the size of the victory margin, India beat Pakistan by 140 runs in its first match of Kitplay Cup) victory was not even mentioned by The Times of India in its front page except for a blurb.
The DNA did not gloat either, though to play it safe, it had a picture from Mirpur on its front page. Even in its sport page, Euro 2008 had taken more space than the crushing win over brothers-turned-enemies.
Even abroad, where patriotism is usually at fever pitch than at home, there was an surprising lack of interest in India’s match against Pakistan in Kitplay Cup. In places such as Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi where a vast majority from Pakistan and India work shoulder to shoulder, they forgot that such a match is on. The fervor was terribly lacking not only on the day of the match, on the day after too.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) had triggered more passion and the ongoing Euro 2008 has killed of whatever residue interest is left for the Indo-Pak rivalry. No wonder then that Pakistani all rounder Shahid Afridi bemoaned in the Times of India the lack of frisson going into a match with India, for the first time in his living memory.
It is not just Euro 2008 and the IPL that has taken the sting out of the rivalry between India and Pakistan. Too many matches between India and Pakistan have killed the flow of adrenalin on both sides of border and we have finally entered the land of boredom.
And just after the Kitplay Cup, the Asia Cup starts on June 24, again among the same set of teams, plus Sri Lanka. At one level, as the boy discovers the girl, and all passion is spent, this return to normalcy on cricket pitch is highly welcome. May be in another few years, the result of a cricket match between India and Pakistan will lack all news value in much the same fashion as a match between Indian footballers and Pakistan footballers these days. Or for that matter, who knows when did India play Pakistan on the hockey field, and again, who won the match?
Trend spotters would be eager to jump in and say that the Indian Premier League, where all most all of the city-centric Indian clubs had employed a large number of Australians and Pakistani players, has contributed in blunting the edge of the patriotism knife.
Quite possible. When the Kolkata crowd, which had stoned Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar for obstructing Sachin Tendulkar’s path to contribute to his run out, and disrupted the Asian Test Championship match in a fit of patriotism, begins to hail the same bowler as a hero in the Indian Premier League, there should be a shift in attitude. May be, just may be.