Take a nap, Butt Sahib

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Question 1: what would happen if Ijaz Butt were run into a wall at 10 miles an hour? Answer: the wall would have to be repaired. What happens if an average human being is run into a wall at that speed? He will have to be taken for major repairs.

Question 2: who should then be the PCB chairman Ijaz Butt or an average human being? Correct answer: Ijaz Butt, thank you and Allah be praised.

This is of course bull. But what the heck, what is Pakistan cricket now if not bull, bull and more bull? And this is not even Papal Bull; it is Mr Butts bull. The fact that he has survived so far means you could run him into a wall at any speed and he would smash through it unscathed. In any other part of the world he would be made to nap in his backyard with his chin resting on his great chest, just the position he was in, sitting across from me, on the morning flight from Lahore to Islamabad.

There are no ifs and buts here but a very large Butt and he hangs in there like a big question mark over the game; a game that we have come to love, only gods know why. This friend of mine, one of the smartest minds in the country and generally perfectly rational this side of the sun-downer, knows the reality of Pakistan cricket and yet, the moment the match begins, and even as he fulminates through it, updating his Facebook almost over to over, cannot but remain glued to the tv.

The team always manages to do a number on him. Sometimes, when the boyz start well, his entries begin on a positive note and steadily decline in decency until the point they snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, as the terrible clich goes. Other times the boyz begin badly and he abuses them and then just when he moves away from television they clinch it, making him look like an idiot.

My personal theory is that the team plays, as it does or doesnt, just to spite my friend. Imagine, if this is what they can do to a perfectly intelligent man, what must they do to the average Nathu.

Now, we have another issue to deal with. The boy who kept wickets has upped and left for the United Kingdom. He says he was threatened. By whom we dont know, but apparently the threats were serious enough for him to leave. This kind of thing obviously leaves a question mark on what kind of board we have. Common sense, generally fairly rare, would dictate that a player who has received threats would immediately bring them to the notice of the board. But this presupposes that the player would have some confidence in the board. And this presupposition may be as flawed as supposing that the value of X can be Butt Sahib or vice versa.

The team manager, Intikhab Alam, says the management cannot be blamed for Zulqarnain Haider leaving the way he did because he never told them. Well Mr Alam, just in case you missed it, this is precisely the point. You didnt know because he didnt trust you guys. So, please. Also, you cant be run into the wall without expensive repairs to you so leave this logic to Butt Sahib.

But lets assume another possibility. This guy Haider was approached by someone who paid him a hefty sum and said this is payment for you leaving. Take this money and dont come back. Then too, the board cannot be absolved. This means the boys can be approached by all sorts of shady characters, and there is surfeit of them in this business, and the board is doing nothing, or at least not enough, to either groom the boys or keep them secure from such influences.

We do have Geoff Lawsons article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Mr Lawson wrote of the time a selector was threatened if a particular player was not played. The then General-President had to intervene who, according to Mr Lawsons article, told the people behind the threats to reconsider or else.

Really? Was it a matter between two toughies, one of whom asked the other to back off and he blinked? Why was no action taken against those people under the law of the land? Heres an assumption: those people were/are useful to the state for some reason so the state looks the other way while they make money through a mix of criminal, dubious and legit businesses. If this assumption is right then the state needs to understand something: it has shown a penchant for allowing the tail to wag the dog.

Betting is not confined to Pakistan; neither is the mafia that runs the business. But other cricket-playing countries, for the most part, run their cricketing affairs such that this mafia cannot penetrate and take over cricket, as it seems to have done here.

It is important, and urgently, that we find a wall we can run Butt Sahib into and not have to repair the wall. But equally, Butt Sahib is not the only thing that has gone wrong with Pakistan cricket. His leaving would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for Pakistan cricket to bounce back and get its pride of place in the cricketing world. For that to happen we will have to do something more than convince Butt Sahib to nap in the winter sun.

Hey Imran, you listening bro? Wanna do something useful?

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times