In Case Mark Burnett Is Reading

I have to say, I love it every time we get to see 'Banana Republic moments' in international cricket -- those sporadic displays of brazen corruption, nepotism, and kangaroo court morals that are still used by administrative boards around the world to solve so many of their problems.

This past week we got to see not one, but two great instances of this: First, the Sri Lankan sports minister singlehandedly gets Marvan Atapattu reinstated in the Sri Lankan squad to tour Australia. Atapattu was initially overlooked for the series, but since he must have known someone who knew someone who was a nephew of someone else whose dad was about to do business with the minister, now he's back.

Then, on Friday, Shoaib Akthar served out the final game of his 13-match ban for bitch-slappin' Mohammad Asif around in the locker room before the Twenty20 World Cup last month. That Akthar sentence was a classic of the Bananas genre, and I personally loved it for a number of reasons:

1. Regardless of what anyone says, any series becomes more exciting if Shoaib Akthar is somehow involved.
   
   
2. The way the disciplinary committee made the majority of his punishment retroactive, including all the games of the World Cup and the two Tests against South Africa, so that in the end he only had to really miss four games. They made it seem as if he was being credited for 'time served,' as if that time comprised tossing salad in a holding cell every day during the deliberating period, rather that partying with Bollywood babes in his mansion, while watching the games on a big screen TV right above the pool.
   
   
3. The sheer balls (and I'm talking, Officer-Coon-with-a-wheelbarrow-sized cojones here) it took to base the length and severity of the sentence on the exact timing of Pakistan's upcoming series. Not only did they bring Shoaib back in time for the India series, they also made him available for the last game against South Africa, just in case it happened to be a tiebreaker.
   
   
4. The Pakistan Cricket Board's odd 3-man committees are back in my life, and I couldn't be happier.

I can't get enough of the PCB. I think someone should start a reality show based on their powers: every week they get to convene one of those mysterious 3-man panels (the PCB always goes for those... who has 3 judges when they could easily have 7 or 9?) which would then come in to the lives of average people and help them to 'disappear' their problems. Got a drug charge you'd like get rid of ahead of an important series? Don't worry, the panel will overturn it on appeal, 2-to-1, just in time for you to get on that plane. Parking ticket? The panel will dismiss it, 2-to-1, citing extenuating circumstances. Zoning restriction in your way? The panel approves your special permit, 2-to-1, due to a clerical error in the original legislation. It never fails, really.