Let’s praise PTV for showing the opening ceremony of the 30th Olympic Games the way it deserved. It was truly a magnificent event. The only thing that proved a tad disconcerting was the quality of PTV’s hosts for the ceremony: there were three people (two men a one girl) anchoring live transmission but apart from the girl who seemed to have had done her homework, the men were too general in their approach to the extravaganza.

Even that wouldn’t have mattered. The problem was that the guests that they had invited to speak on the event were seasoned campaigners like Zakir Husain Syed (with over five decades of experience) and Olympic hockey player Shehnaz Sheikh. The lack of balance between the hosts and the guests was more than evident from the kind of questions hurled at the latter. And when the girl asked an intelligent question about why the Pakistani hockey team only had one goalkeeper in the squad (Shehnaz Sheikh seemed excited to respond to it) the other host, Mohammad Ali (we don’t know what his claim to fame is), cut the guest speaker rather abruptly to go into a break. The poor hockey player wasn’t even allowed to complete the answer subsequently as well.

The question is: where have all the Laeeq Ahmeds, Quresh Purs and Khalid Hameeds gone? Why can’t we have people who are well-versed in Urdu and the subject they’re required to speak on? There can’t be a sudden dearth of competent speakers in Pakistan.