NOT much unites Pakistanis more than cricket. The national game inspires widespread devotion and the national team justified pride. Led by wristy batsmen, like Javed Miandad, and blood-curdling fast bowlers, like Imran Khan, Pakistan has often excelled at the world’s most popular sport after football. Its side has tended to beat India’s, despite its more modest population. In a country suffering devastation from flooding, and long divided by ethnicity, region, religion and sect, which often seems to have little to boast of, or even reason for being, cricket should be a boon.
But Pakistan’s cricketers are advertising much that is wrong with their country. In-fighting (including with cricket bats), drug-taking, feigned injury, allegations of players being coerced into Islamic fundamentalism and other scandals have plagued the national side. But the most egregious involves match-fixing, to which Pakistani cricketers, allegedly including several of today’s crop, seem especially prone.
In the latest case three Pakistani cricketers, including the national captain, Salman Butt, are alleged to have conspired with gamblers to fix parts of recent games against England’s team—a practice known as “spot-fixing”. The allegations, raised this week by a British tabloid, are unproven, but ominous. Three alleged accomplices have been arrested on suspicion of money-laundering and conspiring to defraud bookmakers.
This blight is a symptom of cricket’s mismanagement. Most national cricket boards are manned by unaccountable, often incompetent and overly politicised administrators, ill-fitted to a game that generates billions of dollars. The supremo of its governing body, the International Cricket Council, should have no time to spare for this task. He is Sharad Pawar, India’s agriculture minister. In Asia, especially, many of these officials are also allegedly corrupt or otherwise malfeasant—witness a scandal in the Indian Premier League, the boss of which, Lalit Modi, stands accused of overseeing vast tax evasion.
Cricket is a business that should be managed efficiently and transparently. Those who sully the game should incur stiff penalties—including, if the allegations against them are proven, the latest Pakistanis under a cloud. One of them, alas, is Muhammad Amir, a brilliant 18-year-old, who hails from Swat, which was until last year overrun by the Taliban. This made attending cricket practice difficult and Mr Amir’s achievements even more remarkable. Speaking up for him this week, his former coach, an Australian, called Mr Amir a “shining light of hope”. Yet this beacon, if found guilty, should play no more cricket for a long time, if ever.
That is a necessary tragedy, but Pakistani cricket will not become clean unless its elite administrators do a better job. In cricket as in politics, Pakistan’s problems start at the top, with President Asif Ali Zardari, who presides over its cricket board. With “Mr 10%”—as Mr Zardari is also known because of many (unproven) allegations against him—for a role model, why would Mr Amir not try to make a sly buck?
And this mirrors a wider abdication by Pakistan’s privileged citizens. Understandably they are dismayed by their country’s growing reputation as the world’s troublemaker. But, with heroic exceptions, they show little appetite for trying to improve the place. Many prefer to blame their problems on others, ideally America. They also blithely dodge tax—at around 10% of GDP, Pakistan’s tax-collection rate is one of the world’s lowest. In cricket, as in life, Pakistan’s ruling class should recognise that its country’s man-made problems are largely its own responsibility. That would be a first step towards ending them.
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