What the people are Pakistan are most irate about at is the international cricketing world’s reaction to the security situation in Pakistan and the refusal of international cricket teams to tour Pakistan. The ICC’s reaction to the “default” security situation in Pakistan has been termed as a “hasty, bald-faced and uncivilised response”. It has not gone down well that the Champion’s Trophy has been shifted out of Pakistan and that Australian team’s refusal to tour Pakistan has led to the series being held at a neutral location.

The tenure of Ijaz Butt as the chairman of the PCB has not found favour with many quarters of the Pak media and has been seen as a reason for stagnation of Pak cricket and the PCB’s inability to keep friends in the cricket world. There is especial umbrage being taken at Butt ‘allowing’ Pak to be shorn of its ‘right’ to hold the champion’s trophy and ‘allowing’ Australia-Pakistan ODI series to be held at a neutral venue.

There is a perceived double standard in that counties continue to tour India even when terrorists have targeted Indian venues, but the same countries cite security reasons and threats of terrorist attacks and then refuse to tour Pakistan. Though how comparisons are sought to be drawn between a stable and secure democracy such as India who faces terrorist threats from without and a strife torn Pakistan which has lost control over much of its own territory and whose very sovereignty is now at threat due to threats emanating from its own soil is not clear, since the situation on the ground in both countries is completely and utterly different.

The PCB’s cricket foreign policy and its dealing with the issues that confront it are being seen as spineless and pathetic. And what are the issues that confront Pak cricket? That of “non-democratic decisions taken by the ICC who are threatened by the Indian-sponsored subversion”. Blame is repeatedly sought to be placed at the door of Indian cricket for the problems that beset cricket and cricket administration in Pakistan and its increasing isolation from the rest of the cricketing world.

There is a bemoaning of Pak cricket’s golden days of yore when Arif Ali Khan Abbasi was in charge and an attractive aristocratic Imran Khan led a world beating team full of hard hitting batsmen and formidable world class bowlers. Perhaps if Pak cricket can stop blaming the world for all the cricket controversies that plague it and look within to the problems that beset the country as a whole, that would be a good first step to changing the status quo.

Comments

Add New RSS

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

Newer news items:

Older news items: