Crucifying the Pakistan players alone won't help

Ban the players if you want. Slap the heftiest of fines, crucify them, burn their effigies and do whatever a melodramatic, impulsive subcontinental cricket fan would do to express his anger against a fallen hero. It’s easy to assume that such displays of rage will effectively seal the match-fixing/spot-fixing crisis for good. The main accused – Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal – will understandably be going through the most harrowing of experiences, whether they are guilty or not. Salman Butt himself didn’t vehemently deny the charges of fixing, which perhaps lends a lot of truth to the allegations. The players will be remain pariahs till they are proven innocent, assuming they are given a fair trial. But an important question needs to be asked. Are the players the root cause of the problem? And what of the men managing them?

It’s open knowledge that the Pakistan Cricket Board has hurtled from one crisis after another, barely recovering from any, not because of the presence of an apparent devil in its offices in Lahore. It’s because they bring it on themselves, lending itself the name Pakistan Chaos Board. Over the last ten years at least, successions of regimes have been guilty of crimes ranging from player mismanagement to financial irregularities and much more. The current regime, under Ijaz Butt, is no better, if not worse than their predecessors. If the governing body of cricket in the country works in such a dysfunctional manner, how then can we expect the players to be disciplined in such an environment?

The BCCI itself may not be streets ahead in terms of credibility, but as an organisation, it has a better structure compared to the PCB. The reason cricket continues to thrive in India is because of the sheer numbers, and of course, money. The aspect of finances and player earnings has created a huge gap between players from India and Pakistan. Pakistan players have been denied IPL riches since its second season for a variety of reasons, which has left them considerably poorer than their India counterparts. Therefore when the opportunity presents itself to pocket generous quid by bowling no-balls, even if it’s of no consequence to the result of the match, the temptation is too much to pass by, especially for players like Amir and Asif, who’ve probably never seen that kind of money before.

Both have had similar upbringings. Both hail from villages in Punjab, brought up the hard way, impressing coaches and employers with their sheer natural talent. They may have developed early as fast bowlers, but at the expense of life skills and not being able to distinguish between what is moral and immoral. They may not have had a privileged education in school, and that brings with it a sense of innocence and naivety when it comes to dealing with bookies who look to exploit that weakness in them. Recently, the BCCI talked about getting Anil Kumble to teach the young Indian players life skills and soft skills. Is the PCB doing anything like that to train its own players, who desperately need it?

The board has time and again pushed major issues like match-fixing under the carpet, hoping that it would fix itself. They are also the masters of “forgive and forget” – just look at the number of former players implicated in match-fixing, who have senior positions in the team and the board. The team manager Yawar Saeed himself lost a lot of credibility in sri lanka last year when a bookie was allowed to mingle with the players in the same floor of the team hotel. But that wasn’t considered as a sackable offence. If the players require strict policing, there seems to be no mechanism in place to keep an eye on their movements, however claustrophobic. As a result, mistakes get repeated.

Before the PCB punishes its players, it needs to take a long hard look at itself. Ijaz Butt’s high-profile hirings have ranged from questionable to downright wrong. He sacked coach Geoff Lawson soon after he took over, and then fell out with Javed Miandad Aamer Sohail and Abdul Qadir, who all held top positions in the PCB. The security disaster in Lahore when Sri Lankan players were attacked exposed the board like never before. In this oppressive climate, how can the national team perform consistently and concentrate on the field?

The volatile fortunes of the Pakistan cricket team mirror that of the country itself. Floods, blasts and assassinations have led to more negative press than ever before. The PCB needs to be revamped right from the top if the cricket scene is to get better. In this time of crisis, only one man seems the logical choice to run it. He commands attention and respect, has an immensely successful career to back his case, suave, articulate, dashing, a born leader, and never short of a blunt opinion or two – IMRAN KHAN.