Debacle at Kingston
By Ishtiaq Hashmi

THE debacle at kingston horribly ended next day when gracious and sagacious BOB Woolmer very calmly left for some heavenly world.

The sudden death of WOOLMER severely afflicted the Cricket World and deeply wounded the Pakistani Cricket Squad and, also the Pakistani nation felt so shattered in is Cricket History.

This tragic incident further deepened the wounds when facts revealed that WOOLMER’S death was not natural. The most concerned Pakistani nation with its heads down is very consciously and carefully listening to the echoes of the hearts & the whispers of the world that may lead to a very confounded story encompassing the details of the debacle and the death.

This nation has a profound and an unprecedented love with Cricket and hence, has every right to ask that despite having the tangible talent why we have sunk the ship right in the middle? Why there is always frustration particularly at the big events?

Why can’t we accomplish our task and achieve the targets in spite of having a huge system of management of PCB spending billions? Why there are frequent and long discussions and debates on the media by very high professionals. Why every time there are scandals of match fixing?

Why we have been exposed in dope tests? And most regretfully why we are being considered the suspects even in the murder cases? God forbid, if there is any doubt about us in Woolmer’s murder.

GOD knows how much love the whole team and the whole Pakistani nation had with WOLMER. He gave us tremendous respect and we gave him the sublime honour that he really deserved it.

The things have happened and enough is always enough. So are we prepared to stream line the things and correct our flaws? The Resignations are not the remedy of loss. This is for guarantyied that we can’t quit the Cricket. So, it is then imperative that we have to rebuild our Cricket infrastructure on modern and scientific lines.

We very falsely rated ourselves in the Cricket world. In fact, we aren’t. Of course the individual performances are very good but on the whole as a team, we do not have a splendid records.

Yes, we won the World Cricket Cup-1992, yet with a question mark as whether we really deserved it. And who knows, we reached even to the Semi-Finals from no where.

If the West Indians with 8 points have had routed the struggling Australians, they would have walked in to the Semi-Finals with 10 points shoving of Pakistan just having 9 points.

It was Imran Khan, the dynamic captain who led from the front and there had been great performances by Inzi & Wasim Akram in the semi-final and the final of 1992 World Cup. And then after, we have no conspicuous record which distinguishes us as a top cricketing country in the world.

If we look at our recent past history there had been many disasters and failures due to many reasons which include: non-professional Chairmen.

Unnecessary hierarchy levels in PCB, incompetent coaches, Captaincy chaos , severe fitness problems especially of pace attack , inconsistent opening stand, lack of exposure to the fast tracks especially the green tops and above all the doubts of match fixing.

We couldn’t even qualify to embark in second round in the last world cup and prior to go for the world cup 2007 we were simply out classed by India, England and just before by South Africa.

There had been a tormenting fiasco at Oval when Darrel Hair stubbornly enough accused us for a baseless blame of Ball Tampering and then Inzi took a bold stand against it, consequent upon which he was ousted from the one day game for next four matches.

However, because of this frivolous blame Darrell Hair was also seen off for ever from the International Cricket. Despite being in the middle of the strom for such a longtime, the cricketing authorities continued to have a joy ride.

The Oval fiasco resulted into a chaos of captaincy and there seemed a sort of scuffle during which the PCB Chairman also resigned. And then erupted the shocking news of dope testing which deprived us of our premier bowlers Shuaib and Asif.

That was very big blow for Pakistan and in fact, this was the beginning of the down fall even before the World Cup 2007. So, Drama after drama and chaos after chaos has plunged us into this worst situation where we are staring at each other as who has done all that and how it has happened. It is a real perplexing situation and we have no way to escape it.

No one will help or extend any undue favor to us at this very crucial stage and we have to avert these crises and rise again under all circumstances. And if we don’t, we should regret to ourselves and shouldn’t blame anyone else.

Well, the most urgent & imperative move right now is to stand against the whispers of the world that there is any involvement of any Pakistani in the Woolmer’s case. He was a part of our soul & body and no one should conspire against us. In this most tragic incident ICC should also be put on spot as why there were lapses of security on such a big event.

Why everyone had an access even to the gamblers to such red alert area. When ICC knows that gambling has unfortunately become a curse especially in the game of cricket and players from many countries have been involved in this for decades, why ICC has not yet been able to up root this evil by taking some well-knit measures.

The investigations should therefore, be complete and comprehensive from all aspects. The second priority must go to cleansing of PCB.

It should go into professional hands and developed like an institution on democratic and scientific lines with a state-of-art infrastruction.●

© 2007 Ishtiaq Hashmi