COMMENT: Pakistan cricket: What is the missing ingredient?

YOU can try and concoct cricket greatness out of anything you like, but what really defines the true status of a team is its ability to win Test series overseas. This is the extra measure of achievement distinguishing the current Australians and former West Indians from the rest of the pack.

For all its stirring victories in individual Test matches and its international star power, Pakistan is still an underachieving cricket nation. Outside the subcontinent (and not counting Zimbabwe), we have recorded Test series wins only in England and New Zealand. Cricketing strongholds like Australia, West Indies, and South Africa remain unconquered territories.

Our subcontinental friends have not fared better. Although Sri Lanka and India have both won in England and New Zealand (India has also won in West Indies), neither Australian nor South African soil has witnessed a Test series win by a visitor from the subcontinent.

The magic of the second Test at Port Elizabeth, therefore, was that it put Pakistan within striking distance of the spectacular. Coming within sight of such a difficult and elusive target requires something special, and that something special was on full display at Port Elizabeth.

Shoaib drew first blood by taking four key wickets to rip the heart out of the South African batting. But South Africa fought back. By the second morning, when Inzamam walked in to begin his innings, there was only the tail left for support, and the lead stood at a slender 11 runs.

Inzamam needed to deliver the best punch he could muster, and after 15 years and nearly 9,000 runs in Test cricket, he was able to come up with a knockout. When the Pakistan innings finally ended, he had dominated the strike to the tune of facing an average of 4 balls per over (142 balls faced out of 217 bowled during his time at the crease). It is hard enough to protect your own wicket, yet Inzamam went ahead and protected the wickets of four others. Any of the world’s top batsmen would have been proud of that innings.

Famous victories rest on the shoulders of more than one hero. Mohammad Asif put his hand up, taking a five-for to restrict the eventual target. And in the face of an impending collapse, Younis Khan knuckled down to see Pakistan home with Miandad-like responsibility.

Being almost within reach is not a comfortable spot to be in. So Pakistan arrived at Cape Town with the nervousness that comes from venturing into the unknown. We are all too familiar with the classic symptom of this anxiety – spasms of reckless batting and a rash of gifted wickets. With each passing session, the disappointments piled up. Much was expected of Mohammad Yousuf but even he could not really deliver. He failed in the 2nd innings, and while his 83 was the backbone of Pakistan’s 1st innings of 157, the shot with which he got out – a carefree loft holing out to mid-off – painfully undermined his contribution. The bowlers were nervous too, but bowling has been our natural strength, and Asif, Kaneria and Sami all found their rhythm to keep the 1st innings lead in check.

Pakistan’s 2nd innings was a model demonstration of what pressure can do. Celebrated batting stars, crushed under the weight of expectations, crumbled, while the tail, free to bat with nothing to lose, got the runs that gave respectability.

Cricket is the most unpredictable of games, and though the odds favor South Africa, the match could yet go either way. Danish Kaneria and 125 runs stand between South Africa and victory, and wrist spin on a roughed up wicket can do almost anything. Yet even a Pakistan victory, glorious as it will be, must not be allowed to paper over the cracks.

Events at Cape Town show why a competitive series win on foreign territory remains a mirage for Pakistan. As has been the custom, when the going got tough, we failed to get going. Such ordinary temperament has resulted in an ordinary legacy. Pakistan has produced its share of icons and legends but we have failed to translate that genius into a defining level of success. India and Sri Lanka are no different. For all their Tendulkars and Kumbles, Jayasurias and Muralitharans, they – like us – cannot be considered cricket’s great sides.

So what’s the missing ingredient? What keeps Pakistan from crossing the finish-line overseas despite all its talent and star power? It must be something intangible, because the tangible factor – talent and natural ability – is taken care of.

A favorite explanation is lack of attitude and mental toughness, but these are not insurmountable deficiencies, because such attributes can be taught and coached. The Pakistan Cricket Board recruited an overseas coach in the form of Bob Woolmer in the hopes of developing skills that we lacked. He succeeded, but not sufficiently.

There is no mystery to success in cricket, because you have to look no further than Australia, the country that is most successful of all. The most noticeable feature about Australian cricket is that the game is better organized there than anywhere else in the world. Cricket Australia, their institutionalized and constitutionally-governed cricket board, administers a professional, merit-based system that reaches down from club cricket all the way up to the Test side. The outcome has been an international team capable of phenomenal triumph and dominance.

The recipe is out there. Which one of our PCB chiefs will be man enough to follow it?

No deal in sight

BOTH the ruling party and the opposition PPP denied last week that they were going to cut any deal.

Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani said at a programme at the Lahore Press Club that any party, which made a deal with the PPP would face the same fate as did Mian Nawaz Sharif after forming an alliance with this party.

Punjab PPP’s new president Shah Mehmood Qureshi said his party had always opposed dictatorship and thus there was no question of any deal between the two.

While the “no deal” rhetoric goes on, the situation becomes rather confusing when Ms Benazir Bhutto says that back channel contacts between her party and the government are going on. The purpose of these contacts she has never explained.

I referred this question to Mr Qureshi, and he said that the government had approached the PPP to seek its support on various issues of international importance. The PPP, he said, was such a big party that its opinion on any important issue could not be ignored.

Then I took up the same question with an important leader of the ruling PML. “We don’t want to alienate anybody and we are in contact with the PPP to keep Ms Bhutto posted”.

Such contacts, he said, had helped both sides. The PPP helped the government pass the Women Protection Bill, which enabled the ruling party to get tough with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.

On the other hand, by extending such cooperation the PPP also succeeded in creating an impression as if its relations with the government were improving. Such signals will prevent many wavering souls to stay with the party, he said.

This is perhaps the first time that the purpose of the contacts has been explained by the two sides.

Air Marshal Asghar Khan said while addressing the Lahore High Court Bar that fresh elections would serve no useful purpose unless his petition about the distribution of state funds to various political parties was decided first.

He alleged there was no party, which had not been provided funds by the agencies.

A list of parties, which had received funds, was published many years ago. However, it is for the court to decide whether any action could be taken against the alleged recipients. If the Air Marshal wants to get the matter decided before the polls, he should approach the court with an application for an early hearing. This perhaps is the only option available.

But the veteran leader should not forget that at times even the court’s decisions may be overruled by the government.

Take the example of the ban imposed by the Supreme Court on kite-flying. President Musharraf said at a ceremony in Lahore that Basant would be celebrated. The Punjab governor issued an ordinance empowering the district nazims to lift the ban for a fortnight in a year. The ordinance also laid down the ‘rules’ of the game.

A reporter took up the matter with the information minister, pointing out that the authority of the court had been undermined by the president. The minister ‘disarmed’ him, saying that the court had banned kite-flying not Basant.

Is there anybody who can explain the difference between the two?

A Wapda report says that 15,000 villages will be electrified during the next five months, benefiting half a million people.

A village is a set of at least 10 houses.

The report doesn’t say how many more villages will still be without electricity.

In the 21st century, it is hard to believe that thousands of villages are unlit. If there is no electricity, there can be no computers or other power-operated machines, which have become necessities of the modern day life.

The situation well explains the “efficiency” of the authority, which is responsible for meeting the electricity requirements of the country.

A nuclear Pakistan and so many areas still “de-lighted” — unimaginable.

‘Presenteeism’ affecting US business, say experts

NEW YORK: Practically every workplace has one -- the employee who comes to the job aching, coughing and sneezing.

So-called “presenteeism,” or going to work when sick, is a persistent problem at more than half of US workplaces and costs US business a whopping $180 billion a year, research shows.

Like its more notorious counterpart absenteeism, it takes on growing importance as employers try to keep an eye on productivity and the bottom line, experts say.

“Employers are increasingly concerned about the threat that sick employees pose in the workplace,” said Brett Gorovsky, an analyst at CCH, a Riverwoods, Illinois-based provider of business and corporate law information and a division of Wolters Kluwer.

“Presenteeism can take a very real hit on the bottom line, although it is often unrecognised,” he said.

Recognition of the issue is growing, however, as CCH research shows 56 per cent of human resource executives see presenteeism as a problem. That’s up from 39 per cent making the same complaint two years ago, Gorovsky said.

Presenteeism costs employers in terms of lowered productivity, prolonged illness by sick workers and the potential spread of illness to colleagues and customers, experts say.

Presenteeism can prove elusive to measure, unlike absenteeism, said Cheryl Koopman, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University and an expert on workplace stress and presenteeism.

Yet it’s something almost everyone not only recognises but probably has experienced, she said.

“We all think we know somebody who’s made us sick, when that person is speaking into the same phone or touching your computer or even turning your doorknob,” she said, adding that she too is guilty.

“Cancelling a class because I have a cold just doesn’t seem justifiable,” she said. “I’ll keep my distance from the students, I’ll try not to cough at them,

I think of how I’m going to do it without anybody getting sick.”

In fact, presenteeism is often encouraged, as employees may be honoured for perfect attendance, experts note.—Reuters

Nepal on the verge of a wider conflict

SIMARA, (Nepal): Violent protests by ethnic Madhesi people in Nepal’s southern plains that left five dead in recent days could set the stage for wider communal conflict if grievances are not dealt with quickly.

Analysts say the military could be forced to intervene, further tarnishing a much-lauded peace process between Maoists and the government that has seen the former rebels join an interim parliament after a decade-old conflict.

“If the government does not respond quickly and comprehensively, it could be dealing with a bigger problem than it had with mainstreaming the Maoists,” C.K. Lal, a political analyst in Kathmandu, said on Saturday.

“If the violence spirals, it could be a pretext for the army to step in as it will not tolerate the country moving towards chaos,” he said.

“Most terrifying, it could result in communal clashes.

Sort of each man for himself,” Lal said.

Ethnic Madhesis are linked more closely in language, dress and culture to Indians living across the border than with Nepal’s ruling elites, who come largely from the country’s Himalayan mountains.

The Madhesis say they have not been given a fair share of power and want their rights and contributions to the nation fully recognised.

They live along a fertile strip of land along the Indian border called the Terai, Nepal’s agricultural and industrial heartland that is home to nearly half the country’s 26 million people.

The protests over the past ten days has led to police firing, rioting, attacks on politicians’ houses and clashes forcing authorities to put major towns under curfew in the Terai’s picturesque mustard, wheat and paddy fields.

Secretary-General to Nepal’s peace process, said he was dismayed at the violence which, if it continued, could delay elections for a special assembly that will draft a new constitution and decide the fate of the monarchy, a key Maoist demand.

“The efforts we are supporting to make (the elections) possible on the agreed schedule can only be jeopardised if the situation in the Terai continues or escalates,” Martin said.—Reuters

Arctic ice to ‘vanish by ’50’

TROMSOE (Norway): The Arctic Ocean’s pack ice is expected to disappear entirely in the coming decades and will bring unforeseeable changes to the region, international experts meeting this week in Norway said.

For many participants at the Arctic Frontiers conference held in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe, 2,000 kilometres south of the North Pole, the pace of global warming is staggering.

“Climate change in the Arctic is not coming. It is here,” said Canadian David Barber, a researcher at the University of Manitoba.

Barber predicts that between 2030 and 2050, the Arctic’s sea ice will have disappeared completely during the summer months.

“Last time something like that happened was a million years ago. It is a tremendous change,” Barber added.

Climate models presented by speakers at the conference all tell the same story.

Melting ice sheets – equivalent to some 70,000 square kilometres a year – as well as sharp rises in temperatures since the end of the 1990s and the failure of sea ice to recover ground lost during the summer months all characterise changes in the region.

“It is very likely that the ecology of the Arctic will change dramatically over the next decades. These changes will occur and are occurring to an ecosystem that we know very little about,” said Richard Bellerby, a researcher at Norway’s University of Bergen.

Bellerby studies the rising acidity of the Arctic Ocean, a relatively new area of research.

The waters of the ocean have become more acidic in line with increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. A development that could, according to Bellerby, lead to the extinction of certain marine organisms, especially plankton, altering the ocean’s entire ecosystem.

The steady disappearance of the ocean’s ice cover is reported in all regions of the Arctic.

“We are seeing catastrophic changes in sea ice cover in the Pacific section of the Arctic Ocean,” said Jackie Grebmeier, professor at the University of Tennessee.

According to some attending the conference, the warming of the Arctic – considered a harsh but unspoiled frontier – could be positive. The changes in the region could serve as a wake-up call for the dangers of global warming.—AFP