BUTT OUT, BUTT

By Rabia Ahmed

When making jam, the scum rising to the top needs to be skimmed off. Well we’re in a jam alright, and the scum has risen to the top, but there’s no sign of it being skimmed off, making us the Butt of many jokes, and worse (some situations call for rotten puns. It’s a kind of ‘venting’)

No saints, the British, and one thing is certain, they drew some very iffy lines: the Durand and the Radcliffe lines, and of course the Line of Control as well as the Line of Actual Control; according to Nehru in 1962, he didn’t even know where the Line of Actual Control was (Where? Where?). The Brits made a hash of those, but the lines in cricket were among their better ideas. They’ve been pretty okay, those cricketing outer boundaries, the popping crease, the batting crease, and the return creases.  However, Mr Butt and his uncontrolled verbuse has crossed all boundaries and left all of us shaken as well as stirred. Even the Manager of the Pakistan cricket team was moved to resign. But the big Butt remains firmly in place.

Cricket has not always been cricket, that’s for sure. There’s always a bit of robbin’ going on under the hood, a bit of tampering, many dubious umpiring decision, and almost certainly some match fixing, but by and large, it managed to stay out of the cesspit, until now that is, and it is thanks to the current Chairman of the PCB, Mr Ijaz Butt that it is now head down in the pit.

Imran Khan

I remember the good old days of Pakistani cricket.  It was Tony Greig who said, “You give these Pakistanis a wicket, and boy they love it!” There were the Mohammad brothers who seemed to have learnt to walk on a cricket pitch; the concave Zaheer Abbas with his talent for clinging limpet-like to the wicket, and Wasim Bari who in a series of three tests against England once, never gave away a single bye; the cheeky between-the-wicket partnership of Asif Iqbal and our own Speedy Gonzales, Javed Miandad; the debonair Majid Khan, and of course Imran Khan with his glorious two sixes and a four against India, on the last seven balls!!

I remember Iftikhar Ahmad’s commentaries, particularly when he almost wept along with the rest of us when Imran scored those sixes and a four, and of course Chishti Mujahid’s ‘Down he comes! Up she goes! Six he gets!’

It was still possible to be proud of being Pakistani in those days. And that, more than anything, is what people of the ilk of Mr Butt and his patrons have taken away from us: when he had done with mangling the image of Pakistan during a tour of England, most Pakistanis, cricket followers or not, were looking for the nearest very deep hole to crawl into.

It was Chishti who, when asked if he would ever accept the Chairmanship of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said, “Certainly not, neither for money, nor love, not for a million dollars.  I have observed at the closest range the pressure under which the Chairman works and I will never even come near that hot seat.  It takes a lot of guts, grit, determination, stamina, patience, intellect, administrative abilities, diplomacy and ....need I go on? I have none of these. No thank you. Best of luck to the Chairman.”

Mr Butt of the PCB

So on what basis did the patron of the PCB appoint Mr Butt to the Chairmanship of the Board? If it was on the basis of having played cricket, well so have I, on the lawn of a village pitch somewhere in Sheikhupura, and I assure you that was better cricket.

We all know what happened: following spot fixing allegations against three Pakistani players, Mr Butt responded that bookies were saying that some certain English players had also been paid enormous sums of money to lose the match. Does this remind you of a children’s playground spat? ‘Tu gadha hai!’ ‘Tu hoga gadha!’ and so on. Neither diplomacy nor intellect, then.

Naturally, if he had had any proof to support his allegations, we would all have been more than happy to hear it. But he didn’t, because following very shortly after that we find the Butt retracting his claim that English players were suspected of match fixing. “I wish personally, and on behalf of the PCB to withdraw the comments,” he said, adding that he had never intended to question the behaviour and integrity of the English players, nor the English Cricket Board (ECB).

Well what exactly had he intended to question? Their ability to eat their words? No, that credit remains with him alone. So there go guts and grits both. It appears that only determination remains, to stay where he is not wanted.

The man is seventy two, for God’s sake, and a personal friend of our Percentydent. It may just be time to dump him, and those who placed him in a position so embarrassing for us all, and so hurtful to the image of our country and cricket team


This article was printed in Pakistan today on the 17th November 2010.