KARACHI: Writer and journalist Nadeem Farooq Paracha in conversation with author Omar Shahid Hamid to discuss his latest novel The Fix, which is about the networks of fixing in the world of cricket, has brought up so many controversial issues that at one point the author laughingly asked if there was a lawyer in the house to advise him about how to handle the questions being thrown his way.

The book was launched here on Friday evening.

For starters, the book’s protagonist is a woman and it’s women’s cricket that is dealing with fixed matches, fixing and fixers in the story. Then it also has some very interesting characters such as Saleem Euro, Tariq Zaman who wants to build a hospital and so many more about whom one can easily say who they have been inspired from. So it raises much controversy.

Meanwhile, the author, who is also a senior police officer, said that he only wanted to write a novel about match-fixing with reference to the Pakistan team for which while researching he talked to several journalists who cover cricket and many players, including the pioneers of women’s cricket, too.

Omar Shahid Hamid launches new novel

He also said that he had read the Justice Qayyum Report in 2000 but this time he went though it like an investigating police officer which made it “crystal clear that there were people involved in incorrect activity. But there has been silence on this issue. Why we never wanted to face up to these things?”

He said that fixing in sports, especially in cricket here, kept on happening again and again because the journalists here did not want to write much about it. “Then it was irresistible for me to write about match-fixing because if it is not easy to deal with the subject in non-fiction maybe I can highlight it through fiction,” he said.

On Mr Paracha’s asking how he came up with the character of Saleem Euro in his book, Mr Hamid replied that it also came right out of his policeman’s hat. “There was a criminal by the name of Saleem Dollar here with his partner who was named Jabir Dollar. So since I didn’t want to use ‘Dollar’ and ‘Pound’ didn’t sound that great I decided to make ‘Euro’ my character’s surname,” he laughed.

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Coming back to match-fixing, he said it is often played down in South Asia with excuses such as lack of education or awareness although senior players such as Shane Warne and Mark Waugh of Australia and M.S. Dhoni of India have also been blamed or associated with it. “Perhaps it is career insecurity that makes senior players feel that they have to do something for themselves while they can,” he said.

Due to such aspects, he said that in 2011, he was approached by someone who had claimed to know the ‘script’ of the World Cup semi-final between Pakistan and India. “I did not believe him and laughed off the matter then but as I watched the match startlingly everything that happened was exactly like the predictions made before me,” he said.

Mr Paracha asked why he sounded rather cynical in the book as he seemed to think that the problem of fixing wasn’t going to get solved. Mr Hamid said that again it was because there was a lot of lip service on clean sport by the various cricket boards and the International Cricket Council but there was a quote from the tainted Salman Butt that has remained with him. “Butt, after getting caught, had said that they didn’t do anything as big as compared to what others have done before them.”

“It seems that every country’s board tries to defend their players by playing down incidents and by covering up. Even when Lt Gen Tauqir Zia told Gen Musharraf that he wanted to throw out eight players in the national team who he knew were involved he was told by the former ruler of the country that that would raise eyebrows. The board’s inability to do much then led to the Salman Butt and other incidents of spot-fixing later,” he said.

“It’s a conspiracy of silence about a bad experience which no one wants to touch. But it has taken away our innocence. We don’t want cricket to be like wrestling, which is scripted,” Mr Hamid concluded.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2019