Stupidity of Staggering Proportion and the independent arbitrator (read PCB) has lifted the ban on Shoaib Malik and Younas Khan. Fine on Shahid Afridi (for his apple pie adventure) has been overturned and those on Akmal brothers have been halved. This can only happen in country like Pakistan, where the cricket is governed by selected few rather than the elected, where personal likings and disliking are the basis of selection criteria rather than on field performance, where players take oath not to play under a certain captain and even deliberately underperforming.

Just for a moment imagine, a group of Pakistani players, allegedly gathering at Inzi’s home where an oath is administered that players will not play under Younas Khan. How preposterous it may sounds, but such culture is only tolerated in our beloved land and only we have the guts to accept such non-professional behavior with big smile on face and no regret.

As a frustrated cricket fan, I do not understand the logic behind the imposition and subsequent reversal of bans and fines on the players of national team. After a disastrous tour of Australia where they were humbled (read humiliated) by the hosts, an inquiry commission was setup to investigate the causes of failure (under performance). The leaked video of the inquiry has shown the ugly picture that our cricketing heroes portrays. It was unbelievable to digest that those cricketers can sink to such lows that they will deliberately underperform only to undermine the authority of the captain, where is the national proud, where is respect for the green shirt that they wear? If Shoaib Malik is/was the one who refused to play under Yousaf and was the culprit to disturb the dressing room environment, why he was not sent back home at first available flight and worst of all, when MoYo aired his concern about him after the tour, the PCB gave Shoaib the reins of national team for the T20 internationals against England in UAE.

Remember, there was a big bulky, hard hitting free flowing all rounder nicked named Roy from Australia, who was shown the door by the Cricket Australia after he was unable to mend his off field behavior. I highly doubt that there is a good all rounder as Roy in the recent past but when it came to discipline, no one was above the game. Absurdly, it’s in country like ours where we proudly select players like Rawalpindi (un)Express, Mohammad Asif and Shoaib Malik even after their repeated misadventures, and perhaps this is the reason that new comer Umar Akmal threaten to withdraw from test squad with false injury and stood by his brother Kamran after the later pathetic display of glove work at Sydney Test and Mohammad Aamir’s altercation with senior Umar Gul can be counted in the same as well.

It will be delusion to ignore their off field behavior and measure their performance only on the number of matches they win as they are idealized by millions of young fans and if they continued to behave like bunch of immature teen age school boys (I got the feeling that even those teen agers will behave more sensibly) then as Republicans will put it “God bless our Cricket.”

Contributed to cric20.com by Iftikhar Ahmad (Saarbrücken, Germany). Iftikhar Ahmad is a regularly contributing author at cric20.com. Check out Iftikhar Ahmad’s personal blog.

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