WHEN the Pakistan Cricket Board cracked down on its top players – banning them, putting them on probation and levying fines – it was quite clear that something was not quite right in Panickistan. Many reckoned that these stiff penalties were actually brushing elephants and camels under the carpet. That the whole exercise was nothing but a massive cover up.
On Monday, a parliamentary panel expectedly dropped a bombshell. By making the stunning disclosure that some Pakistani cricketers were involved in match-fixing during the recent tour of Australia and not naming the players involved, the spectre of match fixing has returned to cricket. It is clear that the game has once again been revisited by the ghosts of the past. The dark days when Cronjegate rocked world cricket are back.
Sadly the Pakistan cricket establishment has buried its head in sand for too long. By trying to air brush the latest match fixing scandal, it has not exactly helped its own reputation. Pakistan’s tour of Australia was littered with bizarre events, none bigger than the famous Mike Hussey/Peter Siddle engineered great escape in Sydney. Umar Gul and Mohd Asif squabbling publicly, Umar Akmal using the threat of a stiff back if his elder brother Kamran Akmal was axed from the side, or top batters refusing to play in a side game in New Zealand when greeted by a green top are some of the instances of an unruly and rebellious Pakistan side. Or better still Shahid Afridi trying to chew a cricket ball will remain an abiding memory in the minds of Pakistan cricket lovers.
Pakistan cricket like its society is feudal. Eleven disparate individuals have often stepped on to the cricket field as Pakistan. It was only during Mushtaq Mohommed’s captaincy that these stellar individuals began to resemble a fighting unit and not a rag, tag bobtail outfit. Imran Khan was however, the man who through the sheer force of his own persona managed to bring these individuals to heel and turn them into a cricket team. Think of the Pakistan side of the time – Majid Khan, Sadiq Mohommed, Asif Iqbal, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Sarfaraz Nawaz, Wasim Bari, Wasim Raja, Imran Khan – larger than life cricketers on the county circuit, each a name to reckon with. Now it was well known that Imran and Miandad never spoke to one another just as Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis never did. But despite these differences of opinion, they played excellent cricket.
This time round, the whiff of match fixing returned when Younis Khan dropped a sitter in the Champions Trophy semi final. Then Pakistan lost matches to Sri Lanka, from positions of strength. And then the infamous Sydney Test match happened where Hussey and Siddle did a Houdini. One the greatest banes of Pakistan cricket has been the fact that just about everyone in the side harbours aspirations to lead the side. At any given point in time, a Pakistan team has at least half a dozen skippers floating around. Many a time, all eleven players are seen waving their hands around on the field trying to command the side. Only Mushtaq to some extent and Imran completely commanded respect from their players.
Sometime in 2004-5, Inzamam ul Haq was made captain of Pakistan. Before him, Moin Khan, Rashid Latif, Aamer Sohail, Saeed Anwar, Rameez Raja, Saleem Malik and Waqar Younis led Pakistan in quick succession. Only Imran, Javed Miandad, Inzamam and Wasim Akram have captained Pakistan in 25 Tests or more in the last 40 years. That tells you something about the absence of stability from the Pakistan side. It is a malaise which mirrors the travails that afflict the PCB.
Unlike the BCCI which is registered as a charitable organisation and is more or less autonomous brooking no interference from the government, the PCB on the other hand is dominated completely by the feudal political system that prevails in every walk of life in Pakistan. The ruling establishment in Pakistan has used a revolving door policy to keep the PCB under the cosh.
On Monday, a three-member sub-committee of the senate committee on sports made the revelation after a meeting with Pakistan Cricket Board officials, including its chairman Ejaz Butt, at Gaddafi Stadium. “The sub-committee was briefed on the tour with documents, and there are verbal, video and solid proofs that one or more players were involved in match-fixing,” said Haroon Akhtar, a member of the sub-committee. Recently PCB Chairman Ejaz Butt had denied about the fixing in Australia, where Pakistan lost all the matches, after admitting the same in a press conference. Changing his stand, after it triggered a furore, Butt had said that he referred to old players and not the current ones.
It is a public ‘secret’ in Pakistan that the Pak tour to Aussie land reeked from its pores of an odd and familiar garlic like odour. The odour returned when Pakistan’s top daily – News – broke the story that a player was being investigated. That is when the dominos began to fall. And this purge has only begun.
