COMMENT: Sincere efforts, not seminars, will revive Pakistan cricket

IT has never come to fruition and it may never yet come off any better. These summits summoned by every new chairman taking over the reins of the PCB have so far turned out to be an absolute waste of time, money and energy and nothing more than an exercise to announce that they exist and know better than their predecessors.

This certainly, however, provides opportunity to some of the hand-picked cricketers, officials and the mediamen to lobby around the new administrators to try and gain some favours. And by the time something is put into shape the carpet is pulled from under their feet and then another bunch of strangers take over the administration of the board which for the last seven years is being run on an ad hoc basis.

This is what has been happening all these years without giving any real benefit to the game and people have come and gone, at times in disgrace and with very little if any contribution to show that they really had made an effort.

It will not be surprising, to say the least, if the same cycle is repeated again because there is always someone waiting in the wings for a weaker moment to pounce and grab the reins of an organization which temporarily lifts them from obscurity to limelight, giving them worldwide exposure.

This is what this game is all about now. With professionalism deeply ingrained, it is no more a one bus ride to another stop and beyond but a continuous process of attainment, assessment, analysis, achievement and race against time to get to the top.

In good times no one cares. I, however, find it glaringly distasteful that every time the graph goes downhill of a Pakistan team they become a laughing stock. The players, the officials and those responsible for it are then summoned for explanation.

I think the most comical of all is the Senate Standing Committee on Sports which I feel is no more than a bunch of publicity seeking individuals, hungry for seeking attention and spotlight without much to show for.

I was rather surprised that the new chairman of the PCB, Dr Nasim Ashraf was summoned for explanation for Pakistan not taking the field at The Oval instead of Shaharyar Khan, the then chairman of the board who really was the in charge then. Dr Nasim Ashraf was but only a member of the ad hoc committee who happened to be there and was part of a collective decision not to take the field as stated to the media by Shaharyar during the fiasco at The Oval.

What role does this senate committee have on its agenda. Have they managed to lift the ad hoc on PCB? Have they been of any help to make sure that the constitution of the PCB is finalized and is functioning? Have they, having questioned of administrators of hockey and squash, been able to raise the standard of the game or have done something about it? Not really.I think theirs is a publicity seeking exercise which should best be ignored.

As for the summit summoned to discuss ways and means to uplift the game, both at domestic and grassroot level, I feel everything discussed will fall on deaf ears as it has always been. There has been conflict of interest in this regard and there are not many who really have that kind of perception, sincerity or knowledge to make sure things go in the right direction.

There are too many vested interests and selfish motives, and we know all about them. Playing cricket is one thing and knowing about it is another and that is where we lack drastically. Only a handful of our former cricketers know what they are talking, the rest have no clue.

When Imran Khan talks about reshaping domestic cricket, he means well for the health and welfare and future of this glorious game which he loves dearly. But he, too, gets carried away, forgetting the fact that in an economy like ours there are financial constraints and without the help of commercial organizations and sponsorship the promotion of this game and welfare of the upcoming cricketers will be impossible.

There was a time when Lahore and Karachi had the monopoly and were, in fact, the breeding grounds for Test cricketers. But with commercial organization teams playing at first-class level, security has come for the players and for the game, and now we produce players from every part of Pakistan.

Javed Miandad, the former captain of Pakistan, I think is right and many will agree that without the help of finances from commercial organization the game will be poorer. I endorse his views and so will many. Regional cricket still exists alongside that of banks and airline teams. It has not vanished.

When I played first-class cricket there were great men of the game like Hanif Mohammad, Fazal Mahmood, Mushtaq Mohammad, Saeed Ahmed and the rest and yet not many came to watch.

I have had the privilege of watching domestic cricket of every country from Australia to Zimbabwe, with Bangladesh being the only exception, and I can tell you that not many come to watch first-class cricket there, only a handful in county cricket or the Australian first-class games. At times, only a lady and a dog really. One-day cricket, however, does attract crowds in county cricket.I can never forget Imran Khan’s appreciation of county cricket in his writings but also I can not forget that in one of his columns in a London paper he wrote, “County cricket is poor that it can not prepare a player for Test manhood.”

Have we forgotten that when Pakistan had nine top class players playing in the counties in England, Pakistan achieved little except winning once in an overseas series in New Zealand. It was Pakistan’s domestically-groomed players like Abdul Qadir, Mudassar Nazar, Mohsin Khan, Aamir Sohail, Saeed Anwar, Moin Khan, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Rashid Latif, Javed Miandad and Waqar Younis who then started playing for Pakistan and, without any county experience, took Pakistan to the top under the able leaderships of Imran Khan , Javed Miandad and Wasim Akram.

And let me remind you that Zaheer Abbas’ first double century in England in 1971 was without any county experience. He was purely a domestic talent. Asif Iqbal was given county contract after he scored a hundred at The Oval in 1967 Test and Miandad scored a double century on his trial for Sussex to gain a contract. All came from Pakistan’s much-maligned domestic structure.

What we ought to do is really to cement our grassroots; we must revive school cricket, university cricket and club cricket. That is where the strength is. That is why Australian cricket has remained strong because its grade cricket, which is club cricket, has maintained its standard.

I too know the reason why some players criticise cricket played by commercial organizations. It is because some of the star players were declined jobs for being too demanding.

For the good of the game, therefore, I feel that the day you ignore the commercial set-up in our domestic infra-structure, the game will be poorer and not what you might plan for a change.

The writer has covered 346 Tests and over 600 One-day Internationals including all eight World Cups.

COMMENT: Remembering a fearsome fast bowler for the right reasons

WEST Indies arrived in the city of Multan full of cheer and optimism. I very much doubt however if any of them remember the last time a West Indian team was here to play a Test match. The oldest member of the team, captain Brian Charles Lara, was 11 years old at the time and some of the players in his team today were not even born or were probably at primary school.

It was a forgettable Test match spoiled by rain and mist and saw two and a half innings completed before the match was called off. But there were twenty minutes in the Test that will live on in cricket's infamy. It involved a fast bowler from Barbados, Sylvester Clarke, who would bowl off a short run and a chest front action that any fast bowling coach would wince at. The big eyes stared at you in anger and coupled with his robust, albeit short frame, he would make the ball bounce from short of a good length.

Mike Selvey wrote: "His glare could freeze hell." And once he split Graham Gooch's helmet in two and ripping the top of David Gower's glove. He had what Dennis Amiss called a "trapdoor ball" because "the batsman would lose sight of it until it appeared in front of his nose."

On that tour of Pakistan in the end of 1980, West Indies were leading 1-0 when they came to Multan to play the final Test. It had been a rain interrupted series and a low scoring one and Sylvester Clarke was filling in for the absent Michael Holding and Andy Roberts.

Croft and Garner, who had plagued Pakistan five years ago, were the ones everyone was watching out for. And Malcolm Marshall was considered the apprentice to the pace attack. Yet it was Clarke who took centre stage and bowled with a pace that none of his fellow bowlers could match. He returned 14 wickets at under 18 in the 6 innings he bowled.

Sad that a moment of callous mischievousness followed by a moment of madness was to change his life and career forever. On the second day it was and almost everyone was thinking ahead of the New Year party that night when someone in the crowd started pelting first pebbles and then small stones into the ground. Clarke was fielding at fine leg and bore the brunt of the incoming.

It wasn't a very happy touring squad at that point in time with some decisions going against them to be all out for 249 though they had Pakistan on the back foot as well. To his credit Clarke withstood the stupidity for a time.

Until an orange hit him square on the back. Thereafter he completely lost it. He picked up a brick marking the boundary and hurled it in the direction in which the abuse had been thrown, targeting him. It hit a 22- year-old by the name of Shafiq smack on the head and knocked him out. The crowd went crazy and Clarke began retreating into the field as more missiles came his way.

For twenty minutes play was stopped and there was the danger to the lives of the West Indians for the young man turned out to be a student leader. These kind have a pretty violent following. The police were unsure how to handle it. Mob control is an art and you need proper equipment.

I will forever remember the brave gesture that Alvin Kallicharan displayed that evening. With the crowd growing angrier, he went to the boundary rope, bent on one knee, put his hands together and asked for forgiveness.

Amazingly, the section of the crowd began to calm down. It was an unforgettable moment for those of us who watched it live.

The student leader was rushed to the hospital and operated upon. Clarke visited him in the hospital the next day and was forgiven by the young man.

But Clarke was suspended by his board for two Tests, to be played at home against a pace shy England, and never could regain his place with Roberts and Holding back. Disillusioned he boarded the plane that took a rebel West Indian side to play in South Africa still thick with apartheid, and was banned for life a year after the incident.

If Shafiq or the culprit who threw the orange doesn't know it, Sylvester Theophilus Clarke died of a heart attack in December 1999, aged 45.

He really should be remembered by Pakistanis for his cricketing skills and not for a moment that was caused by provocation. We bear responsibility for his ban. Who knows what might have been had he played those first two Tests at home.

Committing crime for thrill

IN a way, it wasn’t at all surprising to read that an industrialist's 19-year-old son had been arrested for committing cellphone robberies in Karachi, and that too following a shootout on Shaheed-i-Millat Road. It was once again ample evidence that not all crime is born out of poverty or economics. As a Karachiite remarked: "This was apparently a case of crime for thrill." Was it? I do not know.

What I do know is that such crime has surfaced or individuals caught in town even in the past. From time to time, these incidents compel the citizen to contemplate the moral fibre of the upper classes that we have been creating for six decades of Pakistan's existence.

It makes one wonder about the ethical foundations and directions of the children of the affluent -- children who go to the best English-speaking schools, and then find their way into reputed colleges and universities abroad.

The public behaviour of the urban youth belonging to the upper class is many a time a reason to wonder about the kind and quality of upbringing they receive at home, or the extent to which the teachers of expensive, so-called quality schools and colleges are able to instil in them the traditional values of this society. Basic values like showing respect to elders or showing consideration to strangers in public places. Ask women, how uncomfortable and insecure they feel when they see ill disciplined youngsters around.

Look at the profile of this 19-year-old who was held for his alleged involvement in mobile phone snatchings in town .The young man was educated at Lawrence College in Ghora Gali and the British School here. And police sources were quoted as saying that he was connected to about 200 acts of cell phone snatching, since April this year. An English daily also published his photographs showing him behind bars.

The same daily quoted the SHO of the Ferozeabd police station as saying that the young man had robbed some people in the Defence Housing Authority late on Sunday night. It went on to say that he had also held up stores in Defence and Clifton and Gizri. About a dozen young men moved with him, as his guards -- but in reality they were accomplices in the crimes that were committed.

Initial reports about the young man arrest revealed that on Sunday last, at night, four men in a Black Toyota Corolla stopped a woman with her husband who were going on a two wheeler on Korangi Road, and snatched their bag and the woman's jewelry. A man in another car witnessed this, called police on phone number 15 and for a while followed the Black Corolla. There was a police chase, which finally culminated at the Tariq Road chowrangi, where after a brief exchange of fire the men were arrested.

In some of the news reports which have appeared in the print media there are absorbing details that reflect how the police functions in such cases, where rich families are linked. There are also actual quotes attributed to the young man, who ion instance said "I used to like it when people would turn around and look at me and my guards" When a colleague of mine read this he said that he had seen a growing number of young men and women(in the students age group) moving around in new expensive cars with private armed guards, which all conveyed the ways of the young and the rich.

Many of us have been disturbed by this above mentioned incident reported in this daily and elsewhere and have been discussing it . One obvious aspect of this particular incident relates to that of street crime at that which has been causing anxiety to Karachiites for months now. And it has been of deepest concern in Islamabad also, making Prime Minister Mr Shaukat Aziz come here and discuss the problem with the authorities in Sindh. Let me recall that there was a deadline also -- the 31st of October 2006 — which the Prime Minister gave to control cellphone snatching -- the scale of which was escalating — almost defiantly.

Now apart from the ban on pillion riding that has been enforced once again, and challenged in the Sindh High Court -- the Sindh police have reportedly set up a mobile phone crime unit, which will operate under the control of DIG Investigations "to check and control the incidents of mobile phone snatching and theft".

A news report on November 17 gave details of what this new unit would do, and TV channels and print media have focused on the stringent security arrangements that have been made in connection with Ideas 2006 that begins in Karachi on November 21. The visibility of these arrangements were felt on Friday morning as one drove from former Mid East hospital to the Sheraton Hotel .There were law enforcing personnel standing at strategic points on the roads, side roads and atop the overhead bridges — creating a mood that reminded one of the insecurity that has now become a norm.

In passing, I would like to refer to another shootout that took place on the Sharea Faisal--not in one of the suburbs or the backward areas of Karachi. This was on Thursday when a citizen had withdrawn dollars from an exchange company on Sharea Faisal. Four suspects intercepted him, and were robbing him. A Rangers vehicle passing by sensing trouble, fired at the suspects. They escaped and were chased and cornered. Another shootout took place in Pechs Block 6 (near Jaffer Public School). One suspect was killed, another was injured and two were arrested. But in the shootout two women travelling in a coach also suffered bullet injuries and landed in hospital. This is also indicative of the nature of street insecurity these days.

It is likely to be a week of heightened security measures and I know wary citizens are expecting traffic jams.