From Cricinfo's interview with ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat:
What specifically led you to suspend the players?
As we said, we were busy working and formulating our understanding of all of the issues that had transpired, all the allegations that had been made, and connecting all the dots. We needed to be pretty certain that we could formulate a charge before we could provisionally suspend the players. We were putting all the facts together while we were assessing our position.
For some reason, this answer made me laugh. Perhaps because it is the sort of answer you might expect to hear from the mouth of Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Minister, and pretty much says it all about the ICC. He talks about "having sufficient evidence to press charges" but doesn't appear to confirm the same anywhere else in the interview.
Equally, the Yasir Hameed fiasco is sadly all too characteristic of the chaos that surrounds Pakistan Cricket. Hameed certainly does not find favour with captain Shahid Afridi who feels he is "mentally 15 or 16".
Osman Samiuddin has written two solid articles in The Guardian and The Times of India, in which he attempts to trace these happenings to the rise of player power in the 70's, and the general socio-political landscape of Pakistan. Clearly there is a sociological book on the history of Pakistan Cricket waiting to be written, something on the lines of Beyond a Boundary or Mihir Bose's History of Indian Cricket, although it might make for depressing reading at times. Does anyone know if such a definitive book already exists?
Top Cricket From The Second Tier
13 years ago
2 comments:
I don't think we've got such a book existing as yet, there might need to be too much research involved for a topic like this. ;)
Haha, you're right about Lorgat's response. He seems to be reiterating the same point in different words. I've very rarely seen folks giving concrete answers to questions like these.
Btw, blogrolled you Suhas.
Adios!
Welcome to the blog Sunny, have blogrolled you too. Cheers!
I agree such a book might require a lot of research, but reading Osman's articles and given that Pakistan is only a 60-year old nation, I thought cricket historians might see an opportunity in this. After all we've had such books on English, Indian and West indian cricket.
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