Who Cares for Indian Cricket?

By Gulu Ezekiel

Does the Board of Control for Cricket in India care for Indian cricket? More pertinently, should it care for Indian cricket?
Not according to its senior counsel and advocate KK Venugopal who five years ago in the Supreme Court made a statement that shocked cricketers and cricket fans throughout the country—‘If India plays England, it is a match played by the official team of BCCI and not the official team of India…We do not even fly the national flag nor do we use any national emblem in the activities of the Board.’’
Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and the rest play for the official team of the BCCI, Venugopal went onto add and not the official team of India.
A group of former ‘India’ players expressed their sense of outrage and hurt in a joint letter to the BCCI President claiming they had always felt honoured to represent the country and were now distressed by the Board’s stand. One is not aware if the Board bothered to respond to them.
The International Cricket Council has recently introduced the playing of the national anthem before each match in their tournaments including the Champions Trophy in South Africa. The sight and sound of foreigners beautifully rendering ‘Jana Gana Mana’ with the ‘Indian’ team proudly standing to attention was one of the few highlights of another disappointing tournament for our cricket fans.
Perhaps it is time for the BCCI to inform the ICC that India’s national anthem should not be played before their matches and the BCCI could pay a handsome fee to AR Rehman for the use of ‘Jai Ho’ instead of ‘Jana Gana Mana’. Or else the Indian government may be forced to intercede on this matter considering the BCCI’s stated legal stand.
The inaugural Champions League to be played between the top 12 Twenty20 teams from around the world (excluding Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe) is the latest bogus tournament that the BCCI has cooked up to fill its coffers.
Last month it introduced the Corporate Cup—more or less a 50-over version of the IPL—which had little or no impact on the public and the media.
The BCCI/Indian team’s performance in ICC tournaments after 2003—excluding the inaugural World T20 in South Africa in 2007 which it won—has been abysmal. But is the Board really bothered as long as it rakes in the billions and officials, agents, sponsors and select players line their pockets?
IPL czar Lalit Modi had recently said on a TV channel that the IPL had produced “the greatest cricket display in the history of the game.”
Yet both team coach Gary Kirsten and captain MS Dhoni have stated that the IPL is nothing but a low-grade domestic tournament and should not be the basis for selection for international cricket.
Here is a question for the BCCI and cricket fans-- can you name one Indian cricketer in the last two seasons who has excelled in the IPL and then gone onto make a mark in international cricket? The answer is plain and simple—not a single one. But the coach and captain whose opinion should count and not Modi’s have promptly been gagged by the Board. The truth after all invariably hurts.
What the IPL has succeeded in doing is creating a new generation of half-baked players with faulty techniques who strut around like superstars based upon their dubious performances in the IPL.
This year in South Africa Manish Pandey became the first Indian player to score a century in the IPL. He is nowhere in the ‘national’ reckoning but in a recent interview he glibly explained how he has attained celebrity status due to that century. And proudly stated he now wears tight shirts with buttons open, low-waist jeans and spikes his hair. The poor deluded young man!
Last year after the first IPL season, Dhoni skipped the Test series in Sri Lanka that immediately followed, citing fatigue. Would the Board or any of the IPL franchises allow such leeway to one of its star players if he wished to skip an IPL or Champions League tournament on the same grounds? For that matter, would any player dare risk such a move, considering the huge loss of earnings that would entail?
Yet the ‘Indian’ team now has to grapple with its top players missing out on international cricket due to injuries picked up in the IPL. And the Board, the IPL management, and its band of embedded journalists desperately initiate ‘Operation Cover-up’ whenever this occurs.
The Champions League begins three days after the end of the Champions Trophy; next year’s World T20 begins five days after the end of IPL Season III. This despite Kirsten’s plea to give more time for rest and recuperation. The BCCI has not slotted in a single T20 International for ‘their’ team between the last World T20 held in June and the next in April-May 2010. They believe IPL III is preparation enough.
The captain and coach disagree. But then, who cares for ‘Indian’ cricket? Certainly not the BCCI.

(Published in New Indian Express, Hindustan Times and dreamcricket.com; October 2009).

Free for All

By Gulu Ezekiel

History has a funny way of repeating itself when it comes to cricket. For a game that has been played competitively for three centuries, nothing really is new.
Match fixing? It all started in the 18th century when traveling professionals rode on horse-back—and later by train--from village to village, playing for large purses in winner-take-all matches.
Combined with rampant drinking, this invariably led to violence and match fixing and it was in the 1850s that the elite class of England stepped in to cleanse the game and set up the county championship where amateurs ruled over the pros for a century.
The division between amateurs (known as ‘gentlemen’) and professionals (‘players’) remained in English cricket till it was formally abolished after the 1962 season.
The first cricketers to be banned for match-fixing? No, not Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddin and Salim Malik. It was William Lambert. The year? 1817!
Coloured clothing? No, it was not Kerry Packer and his World Series circus of 1977-79 Down Under that was the pioneer. Those same village teams centuries ago would were brightly coloured shirts of red, green, purple, etc. to distinguish which parts of England they were representing.
What about fat-cat businessmen flaunting their wealth and buying up the best players? Long before Kerry Packer, Sir Allen Stanford, Abdul Rahman Bukhatir, Vijay Mallya and Ali Bacher, there was William Clarke (of the 1840s) and other entrepreneurs who would travel the length and breadth of England with their teams of professional cricketers who were paid handsome wages and raked in hefty prize money too.
Plus fat bonuses from shady bookies and punters who had infiltrated the game not long after the first recorded match in which prize money (10 Pounds Sterling) was on offer way back in 1700.
Clarke’s story is particularly fascinating. In 1846 he bought up the best cricketers in the land and formed the All England XI under his captaincy, an all-conquering side that took on and invariably trounced challengers throughout England.
But by 1852 champion fast bowler John Wisden—founder-editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack—broke away with a bunch of young pros who felt Clarke’s match fees of 4 to 6 Pounds Sterling per game was insufficient and formed a rival side, the United England XI.
Thus it has forever been with cricket, the so-called ‘gentleman’s game’. And so it is with England all-rounder Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff who is being dubbed international cricket’s first freelance player.
Flintoff may well be the first of the modern era, though it could be argued that it was Australia’s all-rounder Andrew ‘Roy’ Symonds who had actually beaten Flintoff to that title a few months earlier.
The cases of Flintoff and Symonds are similar though not identical.
Tired of his constant late-night drinking bouts and skirmishes while under the influence of booze, Cricket Australia finally gave Symonds marching orders last year. He has been out of the national team ever since, but that hardly seems to bother him.
In fact, rumours abound that Symonds deliberately broke team rules so he could find a convenient escape clause from national duty.
Symonds’ agent had made it clear that now that he did not have national commitments, his client was free to sell his talents to Twenty20 franchises around the world.
At $1.35 million, Symonds was the second highest richest cricketer after MS Dhoni when he was snapped up by the Deccan Chargers in the IPL auctions of last year.
He got to play only four games in the inaugural season in 2008 as he was still a part of the national squad. But this year he was free to play the entire IPL season in South Africa and was one of the stars for the Chargers as they charged from last place to first in the span of 12 months.
Late night boozing sessions don’t appear to be an issue with the IPL franchises. Indeed, it is practically a pre-requisite with players’ attendance at sponsors’ parties a must.
So it is hardly surprising that the Chargers’ management have expressed full support for their star player despite his poor disciplinary record.
In the case of Flintoff, he announced his retirement from Test cricket at the end of the recent Ashes series but made himself available for the England squad for 50-over and T-20 Internationals.
But Flintoff’s agent has made it clear that he will be available only to play for England if his other professional commitments allow him to. And that is sure to lead to a clash eventually with the ECB and his teammates as well who have already begun to resent his attitude.
Flintoff we are told will be plying his trade—assuming he regains full fitness—in T-20 leagues in India (where he is already signed with the Chennai Super Kings), Australia, South Africa and perhaps in the West Indies as well.
The likes of compatriot Kevin Pietersen, West Indian Chris Gayle—who has already publicly expressed his disdain for Test cricket—and Kiwi Brendon McCullum will be keenly following the Freddie saga. As will be players’ agents who are rubbing their hands in glee at the treasures on offer from franchises around the cricket world, far in excess of what they are paid to be on national duty.
The IPL we have been informed will insist on ‘No Objection Certificates’ from players’ home associations. And what if these are withheld? Will we then enter the domain of ‘restraint of trade’? For that matter, will the franchise owners not raise a hue and cry if denied the services of their superstars?
So is the concept of freelance cricketers a new one? Not quite. And it was a star Indian cricketer who back in the 1950s caused quite a stir with his demands.
‘Vinood’ Mankad was considered the world’s leading all-rounder when India toured England in 1952. Mankad had an offer from Lancashire League side Haslingden which would pay him over 1,000 Pounds Sterling for the season, a considerable sum of money at the time.
At the peak of his powers, Mankad requested the BCCI to give him an assurance that he would be picked for all four Test matches on the tour so he could turn down Haslingden’s offer.
The Board refused. But they were forced to backtrack after the team was humiliated in the first Test at Headingley—scene of the notorious 0 for 4 second innings score-line which continues to mock Indian cricket. Mankad was back for the second Test at Lord’s which will forever be dubbed ‘Mankad’s Match’ thanks to his heroic all-round display.
The legendary Garry Sobers too turned himself into a traveling pro in the tradition of the horseback players of the 18th century. He was a big star in English domestic cricket in the 60s and was sensational for South Australia too in the Sheffield Shield.
The difference? He never skipped a Test match for the West Indies in a career spanning two decades. Today’s freelance cricketers—and their ever-present agents—appear to have another agenda altogether. And the toothless International Cricket Council can only look on helplessly.

(All Sports Monthly, October 2009)

Show Me the Money

By Gulu Ezekiel

The face of world cricket is set to change with England all-rounder Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff carving out his little bit of history by declaring himself as the game’s first freelancer.
This is not an entirely unforeseen development following the launch of the Indian Premier League in 2008 and other Twenty20 leagues also cropping up around the world. But few could have anticipated it happening quite so soon.
For sure there are going to be plenty of twists and turns while this latest chapter in international cricket unfolds with Flintoff still battling to be match fit.
It is also still unclear how his own board, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the IPL committee will react to the announcement by Flintoff’s agent that he intends to travel the cricket world, making appearances for franchises as far-flung as India (where he is already signed up with the Chennai Super Kings), Australia, South Africa and perhaps even the West Indies.
IPL czar Lalit Modi has stated a player cannot appear for his franchise unless he gets an NOC from his parent body. But it has become clear that the IPL rules and regulations are written in a kind of magic ink that tends to disappear once the franchise owners make their demands. We have seen that during the split between sections of the BCCI and the International Management Group which helped organize the first two IPL seasons. It has become a case of the tale wagging the dog.
There is also the nagging question of restraint of trade. Can a national body like the ECB come in the way of a cricketer who does not sign their contract (as in Flintoff’s case) and instead sells his wares to the highest bidder? At best they can decide not to include him in the national side.
Flintoff can earn tons more money plying his trade around the world playing the Twenty20 game (aka ‘cricket-lite’) than appearing again in England colours having already retired from Test cricket. So the choice appears to be a no-brainer for both the agent and the player in question.
Since players’ agents work on a commission basis, it is obvious they will encourage their star clients to go for lucrative deals rather than opt for national duty. Or as Tom Cruise put it so succinctly in the movie Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
Flintoff’s case will be avidly followed by professional cricketers around the world particularly the likes of Chris Gayle (West Indies), Kevin Pietersen (England) and Brendon McCullum (New Zealand) all of whom have already had to wrestle with the cash v. country conundrum. And really, who can blame them? The toothless International Cricket Council watches on helplessly even as the game is hijacked by fat-cat businessmen and agents out to milk the game and line their own pockets.
Aussie bad boy Andrew Symonds had indicated he would go the same way even before Flintoff. Symonds has been banished from the national team due to his drinking problems but his IPL franchise Deccan Chargers have expressed their support for him.
The crisis in West Indies cricket is an example of how the sudden influx of massive sums of money can undermine a national association. The West Indies Cricket Board has been forced to field a second-string team as it is unable to meet the fresh financial demands of its superstars who find the IPL riches too juicy to resist.
What is fascinating about cricket is that the more things change, the more they remain the same. How competitive cricket emerged in 18th century England gives some context to Flintoff’s case.
The first recorded match in which prize money was on offer (10 Pounds Sterling) dates back to 1700. Just 50 years later the first and most famous professional cricket club was formed at Hambledon, Hampshire (known as ‘the cradle of cricket’).
The early pros received lucrative challenges from clubs and villages around England and would ride horseback and later by train to earn their living. This was the dawn of the freelance pro.
Today horse and train have been replaced by the corporate jet.
But by the mid-19th century, betting mixed with alcohol led to widespread match-fixing and violence breaking out. The authorities plucked from elite establishments were forced to step in, clean up the game and establish the county championship where amateurs reigned.
South African captain Graeme Smith dubbed as ‘meaningless’ contests like the just-concluded England v Australia ODI series. But does Smith seriously feel Otago Volts v Wayamba or Cape Cobras v Sussex Sharks in next month’s inaugural IPL Champions League have any meaning to them?
What happened 150 years ago should come as a warning to those who wish to ride the Twenty20 gravy train. The shortest form of cricket is also the most susceptible to betting and fixing. But then history has a nasty habit of repeating itself especially for those who either willfully ignore it or are just plain ignorant. Watch this space!

(Published in New Indian Express, Hindustan Times and dreamcricket.com; Sept’09)

Indo-Aussie Cricket

By Gulu Ezekiel

Cricket relations between India and Australia have come full circle from the first time India toured in 1947-48, described by Australian captain Don Bradman as the friendliest of his career to the last visit in 2007-08 which was arguably the stormiest since Bodyline.
But the Australians are still the biggest draw in India and will be back for a series of One-day Internationals, their third visit here in the last three seasons and the fifth since the epochal 2001 series dubbed back then as “the greatest series ever.”
That set the stage for the fiercest cricket rivalry of the 21st century with India current holders of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy having won the Test series last year in India.
Australia first traveled to India in 1956. But those early tours were arduous for visiting sides due to poor living and traveling conditions.
Neil Harvey, a veteran of the 1956-57 and 1959-60 tours wrote in one of his books at the time that “journeying into the dark depths of India present the touring cricketer with one of the hardest trips he might ever wish to make.”
Things have changed dramatically since then. Even 50 years ago Harvey noted that “Indians are probably the world’s most fanatical cricket followers” and that fanaticism has spawned the Indian Premier League which took off in grand style in India in 2008 before temporarily moving to South Africa this year.
The bitter clash in Sydney last year between all-rounder Andrew Symonds and off spinner Harbhajan Singh threatened to wreck the tour and sour relations between India and Australia.
But a few months later Symonds was in India representing the Deccan Chargers in the inaugural IPL and was warmly received by crowds across India.
The Aussie influence in the IPL has gone a long way in smoothening things out between the two nations. This is largely thanks to Shane Warne’s fairy-tale victory with the Rajasthan Royals last year and Adam Gilchrist making it an Aussie double by leading the Deccan Chargers to the title earlier this year in South Africa.
Ironically Warne had always struggled in India despite the traditional spinning tracks. Indeed his record against India’s batsmen is the only black mark in his magnificent career.
The commercial opportunities that have opened up for cricketers in the booming Indian market has seen Brett Lee’s face popping up on our TV screens while endorsing a range of products. The duet he sang with Indian music legend Asha Bhosle last year also attracted plenty of attention and a stint in Bollywood looks likely, especially since his Kings XI Punjab IPL franchise is partly owned by actress Preity Zinta.
Victory in India was a given for touring Australian sides till 1969-70 when Bill Lawry sealed the series 3-1. But then came a long drought and it was not till the 2004-05 tour that Australia was able to conquer the “final frontier” as Steve Waugh described playing in India.
Australian cricket was at a low ebb in the ‘80s. But the famous tied Test of Madras (now Chennai) in 1986 proved to be a turning point for Australian cricket, followed a year later by Australia’s first World Cup title, beating England in the final at Calcutta (now Kolkata). Captain Allan Border credits these events as being the launching pad for the years of world domination that were to follow.
Though Indian fans were denied the sight of Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell, plenty of other legends from Harvey and Richie Benaud to Ian Chappell and Adam Gilchrist have ensured that the Australians continue to be the most popular of touring sides.

(Inside Cricket, October 2009)

Book review: Buchanan off target

Book Review

The Future of Cricket: The Rise of Twenty20
By John Buchanan
Orient Paperbacks, 192 pages, Rs. 295

By Gulu Ezekiel

Former Australian team coach John Buchanan’s book had hit the headlines for his comments on some of India’s icon cricketers. But what is really striking is the timing of the release of the book.
Buchanan was sacked as coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL franchise after they finished last in the second season in South Africa earlier this year.
Yet the book was written just before the start of the Season II and should have been released around that time instead of waiting till the end of the season.
Now one can only look back with a mixture of mirth and irony at some of Buchanan’s predictions for the second season, not to mention his ambitious five-year plans for KKR.
The most amusing part of the book is his elaborate flattery of KKR co-owner Shah Rukh Khan. Now that he has been given the boot by the Bollywood superstar we are told he was “shocked and surprised” at his sacking as he expected a full five-year stint. This would be like asking for the moon considering the chaos and turmoil he sowed within the team.
Buchanan’s observations that Twenty20 cricket came too late for the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly (as well as Ricky Ponting) have indeed proven to be true and the hue and cry in the Indian media over this issue is regrettable.
He is more personal in his attack on Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh while his condemnation of IPL technical committee head Sunil Gavaskar for rejecting one of his many hare-brained schemes (15-player teams) is churlish and shows up Buchanan as a sour-puss who is always determined to have his way.
More amusingly, Buchanan damns IPL commissioner Lalit Modi and Ganguly with faint praise, slipping in a few observational gems while weaving circles round them.
It was Buchanan’s machinations--hand-in-glove with Khan it must be said--that brought doom and despair upon the KKR camp as Ganguly was removed as captain and replaced by Brendon McCullum.
Buchanan is free to air his views on players, officials and tactics. But he is way off the mark when he makes sweeping negative stereotypes about India and Indians, comparing them unfavourably with his beloved Australia.
Considering the disgraceful spate of racist and violent attacks on Indians in Australia over the past one year, perhaps Buchanan should remove his rose-tinted glasses while gazing lovingly across his beloved homeland.
Invariably, such a scattergun method of taking potshots at everybody and everything will hit a few random targets. He has a point about “obscene and excessive” amounts of money being paid to some players. But then what about Buchanan himself amassing a huge team of cronies among his support staff, including son Michael? Presumably they were not in it for charity.
Finally, the note about the author at the start of the book is worth recounting: “To Kolkata Knight Riders he brought a vision beyond fine-tuning cricketing skills; a vision of developing KKR into a model other franchises would aspire to emulate.”
Considering the chaos the team slipped into thanks to his ‘vision’, it is a fair bet no franchise would even dream of aspiring to emulate Buchanan and his mad-hatter schemes.

(Published in New Indian Express and dreamcricket.com)

Book Review

New Indian Express, 19/7/09

Shadows Across the Playing Field: 60 Years of India-Pakistan Cricket. By Shashi Tharoor and Shaharyar Khan. Roli Books. 189 pages; illustrated; Rs. 295.

By Gulu Ezekiel

Cricket matches between India and Pakistan have been played since the early 1950s and have always had an edge to them, rivaling even international cricket’s oldest series between England and Australia.
The reason for heightened tensions when the two nations meet is of course wrapped up in history, politics and religion.
Former UN diplomat and current Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor and career diplomat and former head of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Shaharyar Khan (cousin of Mansur Ali Khan, aka the Nawab of Pataudi) have been chosen to trace the stormy history of Indo-Pakistan cricket in this book split between their two essays.
Khan’s choice is a logical one. He has an intimate inside view of cricket in Pakistan and was manager of the teams that toured India in 1999 and 2005.
Tharoor’s links are more tenuous. We are told on the inside flap of the book that he has “encyclopaedic knowledge” of Indian cricket which makes it even more surprising that he has committed so many factual errors in his essay.
What is most striking when comparing the two chapters is the number of issues on which the authors hold diametrically opposing views.
This different reading of history also explains why India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads for over six decades. But it is no bad thing in a book—it gives the reader pause for thought and allows him to make his own judgment.
Take for example the cricket tournaments played on religious lines in Bombay and Poona, the Quadrangular starting in 1912-13 and the Pentangular ending in 1945-46.
Tharoor, a self-confessed Nehruvian takes up Mahatma Gandhi’s point of view that the event was a direct assault on the Congress Party’s ideals of secularism.
Khan is convinced that the success of a separate Muslim team bolstered Jinnah’s two-nation theory and therefore was a positive development. He also quotes the players, including top Hindu cricketers of the time that the matches never led to communal disturbances and in fact acted as a harmless outlet for letting off steam.
Then there is the attitude of Pakistanis to the large number of Muslims who have represented India including four captains. (Tharoor omits Iftikhar Ali Khan, the senior Nawab of Pataudi when listing their names).
This has always been a thorn in the flesh of Pakistan according to Tharoor as evinced by Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik’s communally tinged remark at the end of the 2007 World Twenty-20 final in which India beat Pakistan at Johannesburg.
Khan is defensive when comparing Pakistan’s treatment of its minorities with India. The controversial case of Yousuf Youhana who converted from Christianity to become Mohammad Yousuf is another subject on which the two disagree.
To set the record straight, Yousuf did lead Pakistan in a handful of ODIs as stand-in captain when Inzamam-ul-Haq was either injured or serving out a ban.
However, on Inzamam’s retirement when it came to appointing his successor, it was reportedly the legendary Imran Khan who stressed to the PCB that a non-Muslim should never be appointed as full-time captain of the Pakistan Test team.
Khan has placed on record that the frosty ties between the two cricketing nations was thawed when Pakistan visited India in 1999, their first full tour for 12 years. Indian fans who crossed the border for the 2004 tour were bowled over by the hospitality of their hosts. But it was India that set the friendly trend. Indeed, the warmth with which all of India greeted the very first Pakistan team to visit in 1952 is also a matter of record.
Tharoor’s insistence on recording each and every result—Test, ODI, T-20 Internationals and even tour matches against domestic sides— makes one’s head reel with the endless litany of facts and figures, all of which are recorded in any case at the end of the book. In between he makes scathing attacks on the very basis of Pakistan’s founding and the violent turmoil it has witnessed since.
Some of Tharoor’s more caustic comments may come back to haunt him now that he will have to deal directly with Pakistan’s leaders at the diplomatic level. This book was written before his ministerial appointment.
As for the errors in Tharoor’s essay, they are too numerous to list here. It is about time publishers appointed dedicated and knowledgeable cricket fact checkers to go through manuscripts rather than relying on editors and proof readers who have little or no understanding of cricket.
Finally, Khan’s assertions that there were no official Pakistani links to the 26/11 terrorist attacks on Mumbai is unlikely to carry any weight in India. That outrage and the subsequent attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore has practically put finis to any hope of further international sporting events on Pakistan soil, including the 2011 World Cup for which it has already been stripped of its joint hosting rights by the ICC.

Pakistan Stun the World

22/6/09

By Gulu Ezekiel

Several myths have been demolished and at least one theory set in stone now that Pakistan have stunned the cricket world by lifting the World T-20 trophy at Lord’s on Sunday.
What has been confirmed is that this is the most unpredictable format of the game and there is no such thing as a pre-tournament or even pre-match favourite.
If India were the shock winners of the inaugural tournament two years back, few before the second edition would have backed Pakistan to win.
In the IPL too, Rajasthan Royals were the dark horses in 2008 and went on to become champions while in 2009 last year’s bottom placed team, Deccan Chargers finished on top.
The biggest myth that has been torn to pieces is that playing in the IPL helps to prepare for international matches.
Coach Gary Kirsten has just been given a gag order by the BCCI not to speak out on the IPL. But he certainly let the cat out of the bag when he stated that the standard in the IPL--after all a domestic tournament--is way below international standard.
The proof of the pudding as the saying goes is in the eating. How else can one account for India with all its players coming straight out of the IPL failing to reach the semifinals, while Pakistan who did not have a single representative emerging as champions?
The terrorist attacks on Pakistan soil meant no one was willing to visit that nation for a sporting event.
Shunned by the sporting world and having their hosts rights stripped for the 2011 World Cup, Pakistan’s players have given a stinging rejoinder and silenced their critics with a stunning display.
The mood in Pakistan is understandably buoyant and Sunday’s victory will perhaps act a morale booster for a nation under siege.