Tainted in Green!

AS Pakistan recovers from one of its worst on-field Test defeats and an even worse on-field loss of credibility, it is time we see the matter from a different perspective. Yes, the tabloids would splash braver editorial expressions than those used earlier – “Pakistan's Darkest Sunday” or “Messy Board Gets Messier” – but can we for a moment introspect on the little-addressed issue here.
Imagine a Mohammad Amir growing up in a non-descript lane of Pakistan: steaming in with a tennis ball in hand and bowling down the stumps with invariable ease, imagine the chant “Hamara Wasim Akram” reverberating every time he knocks down a player's off stump or sends one whizzing past the nose. For a nation that treats cricket with the same devotion as ours, we need to understand the magnitude of frustration expected to creep in -- we are talking of a country endowed with the most prodigious cricketing talent that's there. And I say this with confidence: dig through the annals of cricketing history and name me a better bowler at 18 years than Mr Amir.
But, can you continue to bowl at that fiery pace with a groaning stomach or harbour a cricketing dream in a thatched house. Perhaps yes, but not when players (read bowlers), inferior to you in your neighbouring country (read India) do ads on Amarpali apartments and own plush bungalows with all the state-of-the art facilities. And all those with one-tenth the talent that you have. Grossly unfair, isn't it?
Heard of casting couch? Beautiful girls asked to provide extraneous service, better termed as 'compromise', in order to make it big? Is there a difference between a Mohammad Amir, if proven guilty of match fixing, and a wannabe model who sees a 100 bedrooms with 100 different men before landing a short role onscreen. And why do they – the Amirs, the models and actresses – make the compromise? The tragic reality is: Abundant talent that convinces you that you are destined for greatness, but opportunity, or the lack of it, that evades you till your desperation takes you on the wrong lane.
I have my sympathies for the men in green. And it's not that I condone match-fixing of any kind, because that truly demeans the very spirit of the gentleman's game. But, when you do not have an international match hosted in your country in three years, when you have to depend on the benevolence of an England and Wales Cricket Board to host your 'home' matches, there is not much hope that you are giving the tailormade-for-cricket youngsters.
There can't be a grosser injustice than this: A catch taken by Munaf Patel (and it's almost comical to imagine Munaf as a fielder) in the Indian Premier leage fetches him Rs 1 lakh, but a five wicket-haul taken by Amir and the subsequent man of the match award wins him a poultry Rs 30,000. Cricket in India is not the same as Cricket in Pakistan. Here, a good performance means multi-million dollar endorsements, there a good performance means little in terms of money. Here, cricket pays for your life, there cricket plays with your life, if you decide to depend on your on-field exploits to fund your off-field expenses.
If we eulogised Irfan Pathan when he tamed the ball in the air to trap those LBWs, if we showered commendations on Ishant Sharma when he tailed the ball in and out to show Ricky Ponting the doors in the Perth Test, we could just as well recognise the superaltive talent of the world's best find for a left arm fast bowler. If only our companies had the will and gesture to absorb the talent on that side of the border in their multi-dollar deals, I am sure we would hear little of the kind of darkness we have so naturally come to associate with the men in green.
The world needs Pakistan to keep cricket alive and Pakistan cricket needs the world to keep breathing. Let more Mohammad Amir's take up cricket with an assurance, that if not their own country, a neighbouring country would ensure the returns for their contribution, as Gentlemen, to the Gentlemen's Game.