THE UNQUIET ONES: THE HISTORY OF PAKISTAN CRICKET
Author: Osman Samiuddin
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 510
Price: Rs 799
Pakistan, peculiarly, represents the best and worst of cricket. Over the years, its players have exhibited an unmatched hunger for success but are not averse to a bit of individual profiteering, whether in terms of sporting achievement or material gains
Read about the inner dynamics of Pakistan cricket and you will be left in no doubt that every time the Pakistan team steps on to the pitch, there are 11 players who are playing their own individual matches. The collective objective of the 11 matches may or may not be to get an overall win for Pakistan. Such a theory suggests that it is a fractured squad out there attempting, frequently unsuccessfully, to ensure that the sum of their individual victories would be a Pakistan win. Yet, it is these micro-contests - at times brilliant, dismal on other occasions - that have given Pakistan cricket both its highs and its lows.
If you were to distill what Osman Samiuddin has to say in his history of Pakistan cricket, The Unquiet Ones, you will notice three distinct threads that describe, in no chronological order, how cricket there has progressed: dysfunctional group rubric, a spirit of aspiration that transcends the usual appetite for achievement, and a pronounced vulnerability to temptations of all sorts.
Pakistan cricket's Phoenix-like narrative of periodic self-destruction and rejuvenation saw an early edition in the 1954 series against England, only its second after having gained Test status in 1952 with a debut series against India. Pakistan's batting had proved so brittle that even the country's high commissioner of the time had publicly dismissed the players as "rabbits", adding, "What do you expect from these people who need to be taught table manners?" The stung Oxford-educated Abdul Hafeez Kardar, the captain, saw an opportunity in the last of the four Tests to turn the tide. For a win he needed his most effective bowler, Fazal Mahmood, to deliver. On the eve of the last day of the match, Kardar visited Mahmood in his room to discuss the match, only to find a team mate unwilling to share the burden. As Samiuddin explains, "Both formed separate power centres in the side, Kardar as captain, Fazal as matchwinner… . A man rooted firmly in the spirits of Lahore, Fazal sneered at Kardar's sudden transformation post-Oxford into a haughty, snooty and worldly leader."
This disunity born equally of social status as well as the power equations in the team was to become the hallmark of future squads. We see an iteration of this in Javed Miandad's interpretation of the captaincy role. As the book says, "He had the common touch that Kardar and Imran [Khan] lacked. He was one of the boys. He was, and still is, bhai, not 'skipper' as the other two were." In fact, Miandad is the human repository of all the characteristics of Pakistan cricket. An anecdote in the book captures his personality that reflects Pakistan's. In his first international tour, he noticed that senior players carried leather briefcases stuffed with sponsorship deals, cricket contracts and travel papers. He too acquired one, though he had nothing to carry in it. When asked by a junior why he strutted around with an empty briefcase, Miandad replied, "I have a copy of the Quran in it." The author's analysis: Miandad embodied "that need, faintly obsessive, to be loved and respected, and to impress and be considered an equal". Similar imperatives have fuelled the rise from poor backgrounds to stardom of combative Pakistani players since, especially after the 1980s. But Miandad, in keeping with Pakistan cricket's mien, was also a perennial dissenter and got into many controversies, including being accused of match fixing by Sarfaraz Nawaz.
Of course, one cannot read of Pakistan cricket and not be reacquainted with the ruinous ingress of corruption in the dressing room. The Unquiet Ones does not shy from recording the course of venality over the years, which revealed itself first only in rumours and innuendo and then, devastatingly for Pakistan, in players themselves telling on their teammates. The story traces the rise of the match fixer from what then seemed an innocent enough failure to call the toss by Asif Iqbal in Calcutta in the 1979 tour of India, through the discredited - if "scary" for the truth they might have actually hidden - fulminations of Nawaz, past the shenanigans of the biggest names of the country's cricket - including Salim Malik, Wasim Akram, Mushtaq Ahmed - to the relatively naïve capitulations of Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif.
The forces working for and against full revelation make for a compelling drama and Samiuddin has devoted a chapter titled "The Court of Qayyum" to it, the proper name in the chapter heading being Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum who presided over the cricket world's first ever inquisition into match fixing. His report, in which the names of the cream of Pakistan cricket figured, was eventually overtaken by Pervez Musharraf's coup against Nawaz Sharif. However, one aspect of the sordid saga that the author has not dealt with is the reason why Pakistanis have been particularly susceptible to the fixer's overtures, except to say in passing while talking about another investigation by a toothless Ehtesaab Bureau, or the accountability cell, that "low pay, insecure career paths and poor incentives for team managers to carry out their jobs scrupulously" may have been factors.
Indians may complain their team makes for poor tourists, but remember that since 2009 Pakistan has played all its "home" matches abroad because international teams do not tour the country following the terrorist attack on Sri Lankan cricketers. Cricket as symbolic of Pakistan nationhood is evident not only in that terror attack, but entertainingly enough, also in the Pakistan Senate's occasional grilling of cricket honchos, unheard of in other other cricketing nations. But as the book notes with some merriment, the Senate proceedings inevitably collapse into inanity. And that is also the story of Pakistan cricket: a driven desire to become the best in the world but losing the plot midway to non-cricketing distractions.
