Pakistan’s cricket players, society and the state have walked too deep into the proverbial ‘marsh’ of religiosity and its unrestrained outcomes
The cricketing term Gentleman’s Game is not just a tad bit sexist, but even inappropriate considering the sheer number of scams attached to the same. Only some like the disgraced Kiwi player, Lou Vincent, triggered a counterintuitive hope with unfiltered confessions like, “My name is Lou Vincent and I am a cheat. I have abused my position as a professional sportsman on several occasions by choosing to accept money through fixing”. He had been banned and admitted guilt stating, “I abused the game I love. I had to put things right. Speaking out. Exposing the truth. Laying bare the things I have done wrong is the only way I can find to begin to put things right.” It was unusual and redemptive honesty, as others caught would typically resort to deflective denials, contexualisation, or mealy-mouthed inanities. While it is a systemic curse that afflicts all cricketing nations, Pakistan leads the roll of infamy, by miles.
Some of the most naturally talented Pakistani Cricketers have fallen at the altar of amorality, substance abuse and greed like Mohammad Amir, Salman Butt or the surreally gifted, Mohammad Asif. Many explanations have been made to explain the Pakistani players’ indiscretions like endemic corruption within the country, team management, and even in the Pakistani Cricket Board (which can deny opportunities to the deserving), lack of adequate earning opportunities like endorsements, sudden exposure to hedonistic lifestyle or even the players maximizing their opportunities (even illegally) given their humble socio-economic backgrounds and short shelf-life, as players. All is true, but the same conditions apply to other subcontinental teams like Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, and they certainly do not have the same scale of muck.
But there seems to be yet another phenomenon that is peculiar to the tainted Pakistani players i.e., the rediscovery and taking to puritanical religiousity. The last couple of decades have seen the Pakistani dressing room mirror the revisionist winds that sweep the ‘land of the pure’ with the unprecedented list of long-bearded players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar, Misbah-ul-Haq, Saqlain Mushtaq or even the converted, Mohammad Yousaf. Murmurs of Tableeghi Jamaat (Party of Preachers) influencing the walk, talk and conduct of the Pakistani Team, is an old hat.
Ahmed Shehzad typified the tainted Pakistani player template when he was caught and banned for doping (the ban got extended after he was found guilty of breaching the rules of suspension). However, Ahmed Shehzad is even more infamous for attempting to proselytize Sri Lankan player, Tillakaratne Dilshan (who had converted from Islam to Buddhism of his own volition) by getting caught on camera provoking, “If you are a non-Muslim and you turn Muslim, no matter whatever you do in your life, (you will go) straight to heaven”. Saeed Anwar was probably amongst the first to take to ultra-religiousity and the once flamboyant team of the likes of Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Waseem Raja, Wasim Akram etc., suddenly started looking rather pious and conservative.
But religiosity, if not tempered with pragmatism and evolutionary necessities, can regress into the dark alleys of politics and societal tensions, which can then become a slippery slope of guaranteed backsliding. ‘Born-again’ believers can then be amongst the most hardline in terms of thinking and action. The short-lived cricket career of Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif, who too was convicted in the shame of 2017 Pakistan Super-League (PSL) spot-fixing scandal – where Khalid was found guilty of convincing other players to partake fixing and using certain bat grips to convey messages to bookies that spot-booking terms were agreed, is a classic case of rebounding with religion, as a means of redeeming themselves, in the public and their own eyes.
In 2018, well after Khalif Latif had been shunted out of cricketing possibilities, he hit the headlines for offering a ‘hit’ on the controversial and provocative, Dutch anti-immigrant politician, Geert Wilders, for attempting to hold a cartooning competition for caricaturing the Holy Prophet. While the event was thankfully cancelled for being unnecessarily provocative, the Dutch politician has since remained defiant, even as Khalid had offered $23,000 for killing Geert Wilders and others. Now, Khalid has been called into question in the Dutch courts for promoting violence, and the verdict is eerily due on September 11th! Expectedly, many in Pakistan had lionized the almost-forgotten Khalid Latif after his death threats, and equally many had slammed Khalid’s call for bloodlust – now the case is back in the news, even as Pakistan has got caught even further in the spiralling vortex of intolerance and religious-inspired violence, since 2018.
As far as the far-right politics of politician Geert Wilders are concerned, he has been convicted of hate speech and insulting certain communities in the past and is therefore expected to muddy the waters even further, to enhance his racist and populist appeal with the latest case, with more grandstanding. The caretaker Government in Pakistan is stuck at the crossroads of reining in religious extremism within and managing the consequential global perceptions, as well as the plausible optics and accusations of seemingly defending someone guilty of insulting the Holy Prophet. It is a common conundrum with the Pakistan cricket players, Pakistan has walked too deep into the proverbial ‘marsh’ of religiosity.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed are personal)
