Never another Amir

It is hard to describe to anyone outside the subcontinent how much we love our cricket. We worship the game but that is not all. We worship for the game. We go to our temples and our mosques beseeching God to help our team win. Win or lose, God and this religion of cricket stay intact. But as so often happens, religion and tragedy share a deep bond.
As our car pulled into the parking lot of an eatery on the Motorway that balmy evening in 2004 the noise from afar would have made you think that a political rally was about to start. The occasion: Pakistan v India at the Eden Gardens. India had piled up a sizeable total and Pakistan’s chase had just begun. I had to stand on tiptoes to see the small screen in the KFC where I could see a left hander creaming Zaheer Khan repeatedly through the covers. When Zaheer pitched up, this young man put his foot forward and drove, when Khan pitched short the bat slashed horizontally. He moved with ease and his bat flowed like an uninhibited painter’s brush strokes. “Who is he?” I asked a friend. He shrugged. “New guy. Salman something.” Two hours later, Salman Butt became a hero to a nation that maybe has only one common undisputed love: its cricket team. Butt scored a century, we beat India. A new cricketing star had arrived — we were sure of it.
Fast forward to Karachi in 2006 and that is when I first watched a lanky fast bowler named Muhammad Asif. He sent Sehwag, Laxman and Tendulkar’s stumps cartwheeling on a breezy Karachi afternoon as a stadium and countless homes erupted in euphoria. We beat India 1-0 in the Test series and all was well in the world.
Another memory: it’s a friend’s wedding party but all the guests present keep asking, ‘Score kya hua?’ A child runs through the crowd screaming the sweetest words a Pakistani can hear when we play India: “Tendulkar out ho gaya!” High fives all around! “Who got him?” asks one cheerful voice. “Muhammad Amir!” shouted another. An 18 year old dismisses the greatest batsman playing the game; commentators mention how the young man will remember that moment for a long time. An established genius had just fallen to a raw but spellbinding talent.
Over the next few months, the world saw Amir establishing himself as by far the most exciting young fast bowler to have arrived in the past decade. There was something of a Lionel Messi about him. His talent at swinging the ball was almost unfairly breathtaking. He was the sort of sparkling young talent that forced commentators to confront the inadequacies of language. He was Pakistan’s favorite 18-year old. He was our ticket to glory: a nation’s redemption at its favorite sport.
August, 2010: And then we wake up to that ignominious morning where papers screamed headlines we did not want to believe. This was a tragedy and denial, our second most popular sport, would not get us anywhere. Our players’ actions brought shame to themselves while disgracing our country and a sport we worship. Michael Holding’s tears on live television for Muhammad Amir summed it up. This story can be told in many different ways but it will always have this heart-wrenching end where corruption and human frailty won over greater, perhaps nobler, passions.
Sportsmen are geniuses. They absorb pressures most of us can never imagine. In tense situations, with screaming crowds or with lips muttering prayers we trust only thing: their judgment about their own talent. But they are human and prone to temptation and the most egregious mistakes.
Cricketers better than most people should know the value of a bad judgment. And three of our heroes got their judgments desperately wrong. They made a choice — an awfully bad one — but in the ensuing tragedy there are countless victims. The actions of three players are worthy of condemnation but disgraceful conduct does not make human frailty any less of a tragedy. Cricket must protect its own. The ICC has for a long time been an idle bystander as corruption scandals have been revealed through different sources. Instead of waiting for leaks, the ICC must ensure that all countries must counter ways in which money threatens the sport. Money is neutral some might say, but it isn’t always so. If you allow money’s influence, you have to guard against it too.
Equally culpable is the PCB which has been criminally negligent in its disciplinary management. It is almost impossible to fathom that the PCB was unaware of a culture of players acting through their agents in a non-transparent manner. Stricter regulation of agent-player relations must follow along with who the agents deal with. All agents must endure thorough background checks and on-going disclosure requirements of their actions/contracts that directly or indirectly affect a player’s earnings. Compliance audits with international best practices are another necessity.
This need not be draconian. The PCB just has to come up with an effective and transparency facilitating corporate governance mechanism and the goals can be achieved. What is most important is the will to implement. With a new and widely respected Chairman in place, one hopes that cricket will be served with the passion with which it is followed. PCB must also take steps to try and insulate the families of the players from media harassment.
In early 2011, as I was leaving a restaurant in Sri Lanka an old gentleman stopped me to ask where I was from. When I said Pakistan, he grabbed me by the arm and leaned closer. I saw his eyes well up with tears as he said, “I am 75 years old. And I am so sorry about Muhammad Amir that it breaks my heart.” He nearly lost his voice before saying, ‘there may never be another like him’. Today, as I look back at the tragedy that the cricketing world will remember as Muhammad Amir, I have a different prayer: May there never be another Muhammad Amir.

The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He has a special interest in Antitrust law and is currently pursuing an LLM at a law school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.