I had no intention of wasting yet more column inches by writing about Pakistan's cricket World Cup fiasco, but when Inzamam got involved in a brawl with his teammates, the team and its performance seemed the perfect metaphor for Pakistan.

Here we have a collection of professional cricketers who are supposed to meld together into a team, but it turns out that the leadership at every level is mediocre at best. Skipper Waqar is way past his sell-by date, and the cricket board's head honcho, Tauqeer Zia, a serving lieutenant-general and corps commander, issues endless fatuous statements.

In this he is no different from his brothers in uniform who love to see their names in print and their faces on TV but at the end of the day, all their tall claims turn out to be so much hot air. And when things go wrong, these people simply initiate an in-house inquiry to provide a whitewash.

Then we have the swaggering machismo of Shoaib Akhtar, the so-called Rawalpindi Express. In his boastful bravado, he typifies the show boy from Gowalmandi who goes around challenging all comers. But when he comes across somebody who stands up to him, he subsides without a whimper. And how can we omit Inzamamul Haq, the big man with the big reputation who holds the world record for getting himself and his partners run out.

Here is a very gifted batsman who is short of a few crucial brain cells, the ones that calculate when there is a run and when there is none. The fact that he is the vice-captain of our team speaks volumes for the leadership crisis the team and the nation are going through.

Before the team left for South Africa, they were given a big send-off by the Cricket Board. As the event was open to all, there was a huge crush inside the venue, and the police had to resort to the familiar baton charge to restore order. The whole thing degenerated into the usual fiasco and members of the team had to beat a hasty retreat. This underlines our management capabilities and was a portent of things to come. We can safely predict that there will be no red carpet and welcoming band to greet our heroes when they return.

The crushing defeat inflicted by India has generated more acres of indignant editorials, articles and letters to the editor than the Kargil debacle. Many of them have praised Sachin Tendulkar's awesome inning, but have gone on to blame our bowlers for allowing him to score at will. The fact is that in that mood, I doubt many bowlers could have contained India's run machine. But his cause was certainly aided by some very poor bowling. Evidently, we make it a habit to make our adversary's task easier.

But India has not emerged a gracious winner either: in the victory celebrations, a Muslim was shot dead in Gujarat. Imagine the bloodbath had India lost. An Indian friend wrote that he genuinely feared widespread communal violence had India lost and the team's Muslim players not performed well. I wrote back saying that if it took a Pakistani defeat to avert anti-Muslim pogroms in India, I would not mind losing again and again. If even a small segment of the Muslim population of India is hostage to the performance of Muslim players in the national team, they are in a more precarious position than we had thought.

The problem with propaganda is that the very people who create it start believing their own hype. Everybody to do with the cricket establishment from Tauqeer Zia downwards had been saying for years that we were 'preparing the squad for the next World Cup', so defeats along the way should be accepted as the price of experimentation and blooding young players. In the event, golden oldies were selected and the young guns hardly got a look-in. So much for planning for the future. This again is a national trait: talk big, do nothing and then squeal when things don't go the way we had hoped they would.

The hype and hysteria in both India and Pakistan had reached sickening levels on the eve of the match. One reason, of course, is that the two teams had not faced each other for nearly three years ago and anticipation levels were running high. The Indian government had slapped a ban on cricket matches, but not on other sports in which India could reasonably expect to win.

Long before this official edict, the Shiv Sena had issued a fatwa threatening the Pakistani team with violence were it to play in Mumbai. This kind of politicisation of sports is typical of the immaturity of the leadership we suffer in South Asia.

Healthy rivalry brings out the best in sportsmen and has furnished contests with the edge and excitement that international competition is all about. But to burden players with all kinds of national ambitions, expectations and aspirations is both infantile and unfair. By elevating a game of cricket to a fullfledged battle is to destroy the spirit of the sport: anybody who did not derive pure aesthetic pleasure from Tendulkar's artistry is a philistine who has no business watching the game. Everybody wants to win every time, but if that happened, sports would be a very boring pastime. Without the uncertainty, who would watch one side winning or losing every time?

General Tauqeer Zia was interviewed on PTV after Pakistan was eliminated from the competition, and there was not a hint of apology or remorse in his replies. He blamed the players squarely without accepting his own responsibility in the affair.

I remember a couple of years ago when during a Sharjah Cup final Pakistan was doing very well, he was asked by Geoffrey Boycott if Javed Miandad would continue as the national coach. Considering that the team was winning, you would expect a vote of support for poor Miandad; not a bit of it.

Tauqeer Zia said bluntly that he was looking for a new coach and asked Boycott if he could suggest a few names. So here is a man who is in charge of cricket in Pakistan and whose only qualification is the uniform he wears, and who continues to hold office despite disasters and disappointments. So far he has not offered his resignation, and if he does so to satisfy public opinion, he can be sure that his boss, General Musharraf, will persuade him to stay on as he did last year. Whatever happens in Pakistan, you can rest assured that serving and retired military officers will continue ruling the roost.

But in the midst of national disappointment and beating of breasts, we should ask ourselves why we should expect our cricket team to rise above our national failings.