Cricket anyone?
By Masood Hasan

You know it was Snoopy I think who said, ‘It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose as long as you win.’ Cricket, we are told repeatedly, is an unpredictable game and like the next man I would say, ‘Oh alright. I’ll go with that.’

There is also that other national ointment we use freely, ‘A game of glorious uncertainties’, and I would go along with that too but when you are repeatedly insulted, your good senses abused and taken to be a large body of morons who should get insulted and keep grinning like apes – that’s where many of us draw the line.

Why are we spending so much money playing this wretched game that brings nothing but infamy on us? Are we not already the pariahs of the world that we must be further abused? What business do twelve morons collectively with the intelligence that potatoes are famous for have to heap insult over injury over insult again and again and again?

How dare they cause us agony and shame repeatedly whilst they pocket enormous amounts of money, are forever in the middle of some shady deal or the other that nets them loot you and I cannot even dream of?

The task for which they are chosen and sent all over the world – namely to play the game and put up a decent show – is never on the menu. Instead you have a dozen brain-dead bozos managed by more brain-dead dodos and other assorted pastries and patties that pass for the game’s administrators.

With at best some latent and deeply buried acumen that is dubious if not vile, the cricketers (can we seriously call them that? They have always reminded me of gulli danda players in white) come and go – and they don’t talk of Michael Angelow.

Instead they plot, plan and skim large sums of money (not to mention the perks) – the best countries in the world, the swankiest hotels and spas, the finest restaurants, the great times and all that for what? Just to put up a half decent show.

You’d think the dodos would manage that but banish the thought – they couldn’t care less and they aren’t qualified in any event. So one shameful encounter after another follows heaping insults on their home country and those idiotic enough still to think they might turn over a new leaf – even a well-used second hand one.

But of course life is not managed by the PCB and the world doesn’t exactly hold its breath every time the green sickly shorts step out into the middle to carve yet again another horribly shameful defeat.

Who was it who originally wrote this immortal line, ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.’ Personally since we are talking about sea creatures, the whole ruddy lot should be thrown into a pool where ravenous sharks can get rid of the louts. You’d think we’d be that lucky? Yet another notion to throw into the cricket cesspool.

If cricketers are brain-dead morons as are the administrators, so are folks like me who continue to take the jocks to task knowing fully well that nothing – and I mean nothing – will ever change. True Mohammad Irfan came out of a cave and Shahid Afridi ran off the operating people during a brain transplant. They were replacing his with that of an ant when the Boom Boom thicko decamped and became a test player except he fails every test and is no player.

As for ‘Boom Boom’ we should annihilate anyone who utters this profanity. Boom Boom has as much power as the Sweepers’ Canon opposite Lahore Museum. Can we please get rid of him? He scores 10 runs and takes two wickets and is in the team all the time.

Pakistani fans, like fans anywhere in the world, want their national team to win but when the team – a sorry looking bunch of yahoos – continues to perform so dismally, even the most diehard fan will pronounce a dozen curses and walk away – except that old man in green who is corporate-funded and travels the world looking every bit what a cheap ‘patriotic’ twit should look like.

It is time they put him out to pasture as well along with that hulk of blubber, the coach.Whatsmore. Indeed. What’s more? Or should it be, what’s less? The only good thing I have heard recently is that he is finally calling it quits next February. He may be a good coach or a zilch coach.

It must be hard to instil any sense into that square-jawed, square-headed bewildered looking sorry lot – admittedly you can’t go very far with your boys who find it hard to comprehend Einstein’s theory of relativity when all they can manage is ‘A –Apple and B –Boy’ and that too on their good days.

However, Whatsmore has known for a long time that this lot is beyond any training and for him the honourable thing should have been to quit. Instead he has stayed on stubbornly, poker faced with a ‘deer caught in the headlights’ look.

The truth is that the entire cricket edifice stinks – from the Patrons downwards – each and every man in recent times has bent the rules, wasted enormous sums on useless legal battles, played favourites, kowtowed to the powers that be and in the process not learning a tiny bit about the game.

Cricket management is not designing a space craft to Pluto and beyond but instead of getting down to the nitty-gritty and staying out of the limelight; the big bosses have plunged in, getting rotten eggs on their faces and pulling Pakistan further down.

Can it be more pathetic that the entire cricket structure stands termite-ridden, that stories of misuse of power and funds abide, that the teams chosen by the Brains Trust would be beaten by the Lalamusa Cricket Club, that no one wants to come here, or will ever?

This entire spectacle needs to be erased and given a five-year period to get its act together. Nothing else is going to remotely work.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com
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