Outside The Line

We Love To Say I Told You So

It's not often that Outside the Line can claim prescience in any way, so we might as well bask in the rare glory. As predicted in this space less than four months ago, Geoff Lawson did not make it to the end of the year as coach of Pakistan.  

Any odds on their next coach lasting longer than their next prime minister? Pakistan -- the gift that really just keeps on giving. Let the War Nerd tell you about it:

Pakistan is one of those places that won’t sit still long enough to write up. When that neocon professor said history was finished, they should have made him do a year as visiting professor at Karachi U. That would’ve sobered him up fast. History never gets done in Pakistan.

The whole country’s a disaster. One of those classic British-made disasters. One thing I’m learning in this business is the Brits messed up more places on this planet than anybody realizes, and somehow they got away with it. That’s what really amazes me about them, the way they got away with it. They realized after WW II that their power was terminally broke, and decided to quit India before Gandhi took it away from them—because if you’ve got any pride at all, losing to a little half-naked vegetarian who looks like the old “Keep on truckin’” cartoon is just not an acceptable outcome. But the Brits wanted to be sure they had two states to play with, not just a single united India. That was old colonial policy for them, and it worked time after time: set up two tribes that hate each other next to each other and let the games begin. (They almost managed to do that [to the US] in 1863—if Gettysburg had gone the other way, I hate to think where we’d be now.)

Now if only Greg Chappell can somehow get position, I would die a happy man.

Sometimes Life Just Gives You Lemonade

Doesn't it seem like this headline was written just for Outside the Line?

Not Even Worthy Of The Wolf Touch

                                                    

I’ve mentioned before how much of a fan I am of those mysterious, 3-man appeal courts that prop up in Pakistan every once a while, whenever they need to quietly clean up any problems the players or the board may have caused. They’re like The Wolf -- in the business of solving problems. They come to your assistance whenever you need to “disappear” an issue.

Well, they’re back now, but I’m not sure anyone knows what for exactly. It’s to deal with Shoaib Akthar, naturally, I just have no idea anymore what the problem is they're trying to disappear. Is it about Shoaib getting paid a lot of money by some Indian magnate to either sit on the bench, or get injured in his 3^rd over of play? What the hell do the PCB care? If Billy Madison’s dad wants to waste money on Shoaib, that’s his own problem. Let him knock himself out. What's the issue?
 

That Which You Do Not Know, You Cannot Account For

As usual, a few paragraphs of rumours and speculations about the Pakistan team gives you more to work with than a thousand official press releases from any other nation. It appears that the Pakistan board are starting to have second thoughts about the Malik captaincy, especially after Younis Khan reversed his earlier decision and announced that he'd be interested in the position again. For once, I think I have some sympathy for the PCB: Oh NOW you're interested, Younis. Thanks for that, bud. Great timing. We just gave away the position for another year to some guy who constantly looks like he's trying to pass a kidney stone and who can barely make the team as a batsman. Perfect.

This is going to get ugly. There are already rifts growing within the squad regarding selection policies, and from the basis of the article, I say I'd have to side with Younis' choices. He wanted to have Shahid Afridi in the Test squad; Malik didn't. He wanted to kick out Mohammad Sami after the first Test; Malik didn't. In my book, that's Younis 2, Malik 0.

Then again, maybe it's not Malik who is at fault here, and he's just the one being left out in the open to dodge the media's barbs. Maybe it all goes back to my original point about selectors, and why we might be better off without them. If the issue with a team has to do with player selection, maybe the ones at fault are those who are paid to select players (i.e. the selectors). But how can they be held accountable if no one even knows who the hell they are? Quickly, who's in the Pakistan selection committee? Any ideas? Okay, forget about the whole bunch -- who's the chairman of selectors, at least? Huh? Anyone?

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.