For a few weeks over the winter I spent many a night and an early morning listening to live cricket coverage from New Zealand. The opponents were Pakistan and I was well rewarded as two of Test crickets lesser sides played out a thrilling three match series.
Night after night I risked infecting my computer with thousands of unheard of viruses as I scoured illegal websites promising live uninterrupted TV coverage. When they proved unobtainable I listened to live ball-by-ball coverage on NZ local radio. God knows what Fe thought I was up to.
In a memorable three week period I delighted in 19 year old Umar Akmal's century on debut, marvelled as 17 year old Mohammed Amir's inswinging yorker ended Tim McIntosh's innings with the first ball of the first match, punched the air at Iain O'Brien's magical farewell in Wellington and wondered what could have been throughout Shane Bond's match winning final flourish in Dunedin.
Fast forward to last Saturday when I once again chose to spend my time off doing what I love, watching cricket. Apart from the obvious there aren't many things in my life that I guarantee will lead to a zen-like experience from the moment my eyes open in a morning. The dreamy promise of a drawn out day in the sun stretches out ahead promising relaxation, stimulation and conversation.
And so, through the generosity of a double-booked workmate I spent a traditional English summer's day alongside my friend, Sinan who enjoyed his Lord's experience for the first time. After a frenetic day's play I walked back to St.John's Wood station slightly drunk on life and slightly more so on alcohol and texted the man whose cluttered calendar had allowed for such an enjoyable and relaxing time.
....."My lord's experience has consisted of 17 wickets, a world record 8th wicket stand, a 88th minute Fulham equaliser, a brass band, a lovely rainbow & even a £250 group bet win on the horses thanks to a mick quinn tip. Many thanks for the tickets. I'm sorry you don't have much cricket to look forward to tomorrow'.....
And then I got home and found out it had all been a lie. And the re-evaluation of my day, my summer, my affections towards several members of a young Pakistani side, of my past & present and ultimately my love of the game began. Two days on and it's still being questioned.
Rightly or wrongly Pakistani cricket has been synonymous with cheating ever since the days of Waqar & Wasim reverse swinging their way to success back in the 90's. As someone whose fondest county cricket memories are of Younis & his 100mph yorkers shattering wickets & toes for Surrey it's been a continual source of personal frustration to hear those who need no invitation to slam cricket dole out the usual mix of hackneyed and tired cliches to dismiss any result involving Pakistan over the years. For when they win "they cheated; lose and they threw it away." It’s a mantra that is set to stay.
In some ways it’s surprising that allegations of spot-fixing and possible match arranging cause such a thing. Two years ago I shared a taxi with an England legend who told of a Pakistani team mate forced to underperform in a ODI against India. He was threatened by his captain that he would never play for Pakistan again if he didn't comply. So, against his better instincts, he did just that. At the end of the tour he was presented with a bundle of notes. What he did with them is unclear. But my cab companion told me that the hatred his former colleague carried with him of his national captain remained to this day.
And it's not just those close to the action or the Pakistani supporters who have more reason than most to feel thoroughly disenchanted sick to the stomach. It affects so many people in so many ways.
In one foul swoop one of the things I enjoy the most in life had been taken from me. The morning after the story broke I travelled to work in much the same way that I always do stopping to pick up a coffee and a paper before boarding the train at Clapham Junction for the 12 minute journey to Chiswick.
But here things changed for while normally I would have spread open the sports pages at the cricket section and read through the various opinion pieces and accounts of the previous days play. This time I looked at it and thought 'what's the point?' What is the point of reading an account of a day’s play that had been decided upon?
For pitch inspection now read introspection. Where Vic Marks heralded the partnership between Stuart Broad & Jonathan Trott now I question whether it could possibly be a coincidence that England put on the largest 8th wicket stand in the history of the game in a match involving a team that might not actually want to win?
Instead of reading Mike Brearley's comments on the moment Mohammed Amir went off the field due to injury as being the natural turning point in the game it's understandable the question should now be whether in fact he was injured at all?
And why when he was to return moments later did he sit out 15 overs play despite having taken six of the seven wickets to have fallen? Is the fact that he then went wicketless for the remainder of the innings also adown to the honest vagaries of the game? And there’s more. Should England be praised for one of the biggest & quickest turnarounds in world cricket or Pakistan damned?
And as the mind really starts to wander down dark corridors of uncertainty that really shouldn't be explored, will we ever know everything that happened in that West Indian hotel room the night Bob Woolmer was found dead just 24 hours after Pakistan had 'remarkably' lost in the World Cup to Ireland?
These are the kinds of questions that I have found myself asking since I heard of the revelations. And the feeling is mutual for it's not just me asking these questions. In Australia those players & spectators who basked in their sides 'remarkable' comeback in Sydney at the start of the year will be asking themselves whether the Pakistani's really did make $1.4 million from chucking the match. That truly is remarkable.
So where now for me and the millions of others who now doubt the sport they have grown up watching? How you rebuild the faith and restore it to those who devote their time and energy to following cricket is unclear. For now when I glance up and see cricket on the TV screens it fills me with sadness and anger. It makes me think of betrayal and greed. Nobody wants to wake up and feel that ahead of a day at the cricket. There's nothing zen-like about that.
"The bond between the fan and the sports hero is among the purest in the world. It is also among the most sacrosanct…..Sportspersons can sometimes be forgiven for taking adulation for granted, but they must never test, much less abuse, faith. Once shaken, faith is the hardest to restore. - Cricinfo Editor Sambit Bal
Last week a new cricket tour set for February was announced. Pakistan will return to New Zealand and take part in a two Test series. At the time I was disappointed it wasn’t longer. Now I wonder whether anyone will be watching. For after the events of the last weekend it remains to be seen whether people like me the world over will ever bother to wait up and watch cricket involving Pakistan ever again.
About Me
Monday 30 August 2010
Wednesday 11 August 2010
The clanger
Is it just me or is David Cameron turning into George 'Dubya' Bush? He's only been in power for three months and he's made more clangers than Tony Blair did in ten years. Okay, he's not yet taken us to war illegally yet, but surely that's not far off?
Since scraping to victory in May's general election Cameron has been forced to apologise or backtrack more regularly than your local railway station public address system. Last week he came under fire for saying to an American audience that England played a junior role in World War 2. That is insulting on many, many levels.
Then minutes after being held to task by a Brighton pensioner over the junior partner comment, and holding his hands up to his mistake, he went on to say Iran had a nuclear bomb, which it doesn't. At least not yet. You know you're in trouble when it’s the Aussie media calling you stupid.
Moving on and you start to notice a common theme in this loose talk for he has also told an anti-Israeli Turkish audience that Gaza was nothing more than a prison camp and then to an Indian one that Pakistan have been funding terrorism.
No doubt he was still taking in the wild applause following this last speech when one of his aides informed him that the Pakistani president was actually visiting town the following week. So lo' behold he immediately went and changed his mind and declared they are doing a sterling job of keeping a lid on those pesky Taliban.
Though it was after he went on record to describe himself as middle class that I finally had had enough. What next, black friends?
Middle class! Ha! Who is he kidding? Firstly, he went to Eton, secondly he's related to King William IV and thirdly doesn't he know that nobody, but nobody pretends to be middle class? You're either “working class and proud” or rich and don't give a fuck. Seriously, anyone who actually lies about being middle class shouldn’t be entrusted to run a bath let alone a country.
Now, you might believe some of what he is saying to be true. You might agree that Pakistan is funding the terrorists who learn their trade inside the countries border, that the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is inhumane, that England's role in winning World War II owes much to America’s intervention in 1941 and that David Cameron does indeed come from a middle class background, okay maybe that is one step too far.
But apart from pretending he wasn't brought up in a castle with a pet dragon living under the drawbridge, what I find most insulting about him is that when he visits foreign countries he goes out of his way to tell them exactly what they want to hear. And then when he's in his own country he tells us exactly what we don’t. That we're going to have to suffer the largest cuts in public services of all time; while the bankers are allowed to carry on as before. How is that fair?
I suppose that now we've voted him in (sort of) he feels confident enough to do what he likes over here. And like a foreign Premier League footballer thinks that whatever he says in another country will be kept a nice secret between himself and his smiling audience. Oh dear.
I've seen David ‘Dubya’ Cameron (his middle name is William) in action. His aides understood the importance of increasing his media profile in the lead to the general election. As his only policy seemed to be that he wasn’t Gordon Brown it was important he was kept on the move around the country and he ended up spending more time in our studios than half of our presenters.
To watch him stand around the programming floor pretending to have an interest in football was nearly as painful as his attempts to fit in with us. He was like the teacher at school who thinks he can hang with the kids out of school just by wearing a ‘trendy’ jumper. It was so bad.
And it wasn't just the way his aim of integrating himself within the talkSPORT office was as doomed to failure as a middle class person trying to decrease the chances of being ripped off by a mechanic by dropping a 'T' here and there. No, it wasn't that, it was because he bothered in the first place.
Call me old fashioned but while I want my leaders to have the common touch I also want them to have something about them that inspires, that makes me stop what I'm doing (reading cricinfo.com usually) when they walk in the room, that sets them out as different, as having something about them so bloody impressive that I can see why they see themselves fit to lead a whole nation of people. Basically I want David Beckham to be PM.
But David Cameron doesn’t have any of this. He can’t dazzle anyone with his intellect, charisma or oratory skills. He's just another bland, posh bloke who only got into power because Labour had been so unbelievably awful and because there wasn't enough about him to divide his own party.
But with at least five years remaining of David Cameron's tenure we're already starting to see a glimpse of the future. A future where David Cameron & the UK are set to become the Prince Phillip of world politics.
All of which is pretty apt as David and Phillip are distantly related. Through marriage that is. Prince Phillip's marriage to the Queen......Middle class, my arse.
Since scraping to victory in May's general election Cameron has been forced to apologise or backtrack more regularly than your local railway station public address system. Last week he came under fire for saying to an American audience that England played a junior role in World War 2. That is insulting on many, many levels.
Then minutes after being held to task by a Brighton pensioner over the junior partner comment, and holding his hands up to his mistake, he went on to say Iran had a nuclear bomb, which it doesn't. At least not yet. You know you're in trouble when it’s the Aussie media calling you stupid.
Moving on and you start to notice a common theme in this loose talk for he has also told an anti-Israeli Turkish audience that Gaza was nothing more than a prison camp and then to an Indian one that Pakistan have been funding terrorism.
No doubt he was still taking in the wild applause following this last speech when one of his aides informed him that the Pakistani president was actually visiting town the following week. So lo' behold he immediately went and changed his mind and declared they are doing a sterling job of keeping a lid on those pesky Taliban.
Though it was after he went on record to describe himself as middle class that I finally had had enough. What next, black friends?
Middle class! Ha! Who is he kidding? Firstly, he went to Eton, secondly he's related to King William IV and thirdly doesn't he know that nobody, but nobody pretends to be middle class? You're either “working class and proud” or rich and don't give a fuck. Seriously, anyone who actually lies about being middle class shouldn’t be entrusted to run a bath let alone a country.
Now, you might believe some of what he is saying to be true. You might agree that Pakistan is funding the terrorists who learn their trade inside the countries border, that the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is inhumane, that England's role in winning World War II owes much to America’s intervention in 1941 and that David Cameron does indeed come from a middle class background, okay maybe that is one step too far.
But apart from pretending he wasn't brought up in a castle with a pet dragon living under the drawbridge, what I find most insulting about him is that when he visits foreign countries he goes out of his way to tell them exactly what they want to hear. And then when he's in his own country he tells us exactly what we don’t. That we're going to have to suffer the largest cuts in public services of all time; while the bankers are allowed to carry on as before. How is that fair?
I suppose that now we've voted him in (sort of) he feels confident enough to do what he likes over here. And like a foreign Premier League footballer thinks that whatever he says in another country will be kept a nice secret between himself and his smiling audience. Oh dear.
I've seen David ‘Dubya’ Cameron (his middle name is William) in action. His aides understood the importance of increasing his media profile in the lead to the general election. As his only policy seemed to be that he wasn’t Gordon Brown it was important he was kept on the move around the country and he ended up spending more time in our studios than half of our presenters.
To watch him stand around the programming floor pretending to have an interest in football was nearly as painful as his attempts to fit in with us. He was like the teacher at school who thinks he can hang with the kids out of school just by wearing a ‘trendy’ jumper. It was so bad.
And it wasn't just the way his aim of integrating himself within the talkSPORT office was as doomed to failure as a middle class person trying to decrease the chances of being ripped off by a mechanic by dropping a 'T' here and there. No, it wasn't that, it was because he bothered in the first place.
Call me old fashioned but while I want my leaders to have the common touch I also want them to have something about them that inspires, that makes me stop what I'm doing (reading cricinfo.com usually) when they walk in the room, that sets them out as different, as having something about them so bloody impressive that I can see why they see themselves fit to lead a whole nation of people. Basically I want David Beckham to be PM.
But David Cameron doesn’t have any of this. He can’t dazzle anyone with his intellect, charisma or oratory skills. He's just another bland, posh bloke who only got into power because Labour had been so unbelievably awful and because there wasn't enough about him to divide his own party.
But with at least five years remaining of David Cameron's tenure we're already starting to see a glimpse of the future. A future where David Cameron & the UK are set to become the Prince Phillip of world politics.
All of which is pretty apt as David and Phillip are distantly related. Through marriage that is. Prince Phillip's marriage to the Queen......Middle class, my arse.
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