Bad boys

I have been a fan of the Pakistan cricket team for a while now. Ever since I started following the game closely and avidly, on television, in newspapers and magazines, on the Internet. Life now is incomplete without cricket. So controversies surrounding the team are not new to me. The Pakistanis have always had a reputation of being the bad boys of world cricket. From bowling spearheads Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Aquib Javed binging on ganja on a Caribbean beach to Shoaib Akhtar and other quickies being called for throwing, chucking, and ball-tempering, Pakistan has been through it all.

The speed at which the cricket board replaces coaches, both overall and bowling, is almost a joke now. The to-be or not-to-be captaincy saga also did not come as a surprise. What did was the manner in which the cricket board reacted. Not that the Indian board fares any better. But the Pakistanis take the cake as far as bad management is concerned. Now Bob Woolmer, the man who has been with the team through the ball-tampering mess and the captaincy imbroglio, at the same time lifting the side out of the doldrums in terms of sheer grit and high quality performance was also seen to be under a cloud. A recent report however quashed those rumours, thankfully for the team, and for the board.

The doping accusations, I must admit were a shock. Really. Shoaib Akhtar, thanks to his starry airs and his bohemian lifestyle, as well as the fact that he is the fastest bowler of the cricket ball on the planet, has been for long been under the scanner. His rockstar ways have never gone down well with the Pakistan Cricket Board. Mohammad Asif was more of a surprise. That a young man of 23 who has received such stupendous success in a short time and was seen as all set to claim the place the Waqar Younis’ and the Wasim Akrams’ left in the team would do something as foolish as dope is unpardonable. Why throw everything away in this fashion? He may have been ignorant about the contents of the medication he was consuming to get over injuries. Perfectly possible. I don’t know what reasons the two dope-tainted players will present before the three-member inquiry commission they are supposed to face in a day or two. But the scars shall remain…there’s no question about it.