The strangest selection
Iftikhar Ahmed, Fawad Alam
(and hundreds of other Pakistanis)
Most months, most years
By Imran Yusuf
Across the world in recent months some bizarre selections have stuck out like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah.
There's Donald Trump's selection for president by the American electorate, when Hillary Clinton is far more qualified. There's Marouane Fellaini's selection by Jose Mourinho as a steadying substitute, when Bastian Schweinsteiger is far more qualified. There's the Swedish Academy's selection of Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature, when the people who will write comments at the bottom of this piece are far more qualified.
In Pakistan, though, the natives have treated these shocking picks like water off a duck's back while the duck sits in a jacuzzi, listening to a meditation CD of water sounds. For Pakistanis, strange selections are the norm. And even in a country where Nawaz Sharif has been chosen by the people to be their prime minister not once, not twice, but three times, no institution has as rich and varied a history of strange selections as the Pakistan cricket team.
Every Pakistan follower has a favourite selection: one where some young, unknown, unfancied raw talent bursts onto the scene like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah breaking out into a Prince guitar solo after the last rites. These fans have even more infamous selections, where, due to one of many possible reasons, somebody turns up, fails, and is never seen again: "We don't have a proper domestic system, yaar, these guys aren't tested"; "It's pure sifarish, yaar, he's the chief selector's son's teacher's cook's former barber's (parted ways over a moustache trimmed too short) sister-in-law's son."
Never seen again, that is, until you are at a wedding decades later and your friend points at someone overenthusiastically scooping from the deep dish of chicken pilau and says, "That's Moshin-e-Akbar", and you say, "And I'm Buttu Butt the Third, so what?" And he says, "No, you South Punjabi ignoramus, he played the first Test against Australia in 1995," and you shrug and go back to overenthusiastically watching the bride's girlfriends' synchronised dance.
"Every Pakistan follower has a favourite selection: one where some young, unknown, unfancied raw talent bursts onto the scene like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah breaking out into a Prince guitar solo"
The most recent of these is probably Iftikhar Ahmed, who turned up for the Test series in England last summer, failed, and has never been seen since. A friend put it somewhat cruelly - "He can't bat, he can't bowl, he can't field, and if you ask him his name, he'll probably screw that up" - but cruelty is part of the high stakes of international cricket. (Cruelty is also the main part of the mostly sadistic practice that is being a sports fan, but we'll leave this for the special Freudian issue of the Cricket Monthly that I wait for in vain.)
Pakistan also has many cases of the inverse problem: the renowned non-selection. No individual has been more unfairly condemned to this purgatory in recent years than a tiny man with a gargantuan first-class record: he of the Test century on debut batting out of position: Fawad Alam. The better he has done, the less chance he has had of being selected. I have been told by a good source at the PCB that it's the diminutive size of his arms that puts off selectors. "They're just too small," one chief selector supposedly said. In our data-driven age, this is a strange comment; I'm sure it could also form part of the forthcoming Freud edition.
Despite such injustices, I welcome Pakistan's bizarre selections. For a start, they mirror life. Who among us hasn't had some unfair advantage: the extra tuition paid by our parents that helped us get into that college; the friend who helped get us that internship; the pure dumb luck to be born into a class or in a country at a particularly fortunate moment? And who among us has not been able to have a crack at something for no good reason? For me, this was piano lessons. My parents paid for them because I thought I was Mozart. I was not. There is some poor kid out there in some slum who actually is Mozart - but we'll never know.
The counterargument is that in a world where the dice are loaded, the closest we get to pure meritocracy is sport. To which I say, "Utter tosh, old trout" and point to the British gold medal winners from this year's Olympics. The dice are always loaded and strange selections help reveal this.
So I hope to see more oddball picks from Pakistan. They are like that man in the tight pink suit. Probably a mistake; rather inappropriate; almost certainly in the wrong place at the wrong time; but you just can't help watching for what happens next.
source:
Iftikhar Ahmed, Fawad Alam
(and hundreds of other Pakistanis)
Most months, most years
By Imran Yusuf
Across the world in recent months some bizarre selections have stuck out like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah.
There's Donald Trump's selection for president by the American electorate, when Hillary Clinton is far more qualified. There's Marouane Fellaini's selection by Jose Mourinho as a steadying substitute, when Bastian Schweinsteiger is far more qualified. There's the Swedish Academy's selection of Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature, when the people who will write comments at the bottom of this piece are far more qualified.
In Pakistan, though, the natives have treated these shocking picks like water off a duck's back while the duck sits in a jacuzzi, listening to a meditation CD of water sounds. For Pakistanis, strange selections are the norm. And even in a country where Nawaz Sharif has been chosen by the people to be their prime minister not once, not twice, but three times, no institution has as rich and varied a history of strange selections as the Pakistan cricket team.
Every Pakistan follower has a favourite selection: one where some young, unknown, unfancied raw talent bursts onto the scene like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah breaking out into a Prince guitar solo after the last rites. These fans have even more infamous selections, where, due to one of many possible reasons, somebody turns up, fails, and is never seen again: "We don't have a proper domestic system, yaar, these guys aren't tested"; "It's pure sifarish, yaar, he's the chief selector's son's teacher's cook's former barber's (parted ways over a moustache trimmed too short) sister-in-law's son."
Never seen again, that is, until you are at a wedding decades later and your friend points at someone overenthusiastically scooping from the deep dish of chicken pilau and says, "That's Moshin-e-Akbar", and you say, "And I'm Buttu Butt the Third, so what?" And he says, "No, you South Punjabi ignoramus, he played the first Test against Australia in 1995," and you shrug and go back to overenthusiastically watching the bride's girlfriends' synchronised dance.
"Every Pakistan follower has a favourite selection: one where some young, unknown, unfancied raw talent bursts onto the scene like a man in a tight pink suit at the funeral of a mullah breaking out into a Prince guitar solo"
The most recent of these is probably Iftikhar Ahmed, who turned up for the Test series in England last summer, failed, and has never been seen since. A friend put it somewhat cruelly - "He can't bat, he can't bowl, he can't field, and if you ask him his name, he'll probably screw that up" - but cruelty is part of the high stakes of international cricket. (Cruelty is also the main part of the mostly sadistic practice that is being a sports fan, but we'll leave this for the special Freudian issue of the Cricket Monthly that I wait for in vain.)
Pakistan also has many cases of the inverse problem: the renowned non-selection. No individual has been more unfairly condemned to this purgatory in recent years than a tiny man with a gargantuan first-class record: he of the Test century on debut batting out of position: Fawad Alam. The better he has done, the less chance he has had of being selected. I have been told by a good source at the PCB that it's the diminutive size of his arms that puts off selectors. "They're just too small," one chief selector supposedly said. In our data-driven age, this is a strange comment; I'm sure it could also form part of the forthcoming Freud edition.
Despite such injustices, I welcome Pakistan's bizarre selections. For a start, they mirror life. Who among us hasn't had some unfair advantage: the extra tuition paid by our parents that helped us get into that college; the friend who helped get us that internship; the pure dumb luck to be born into a class or in a country at a particularly fortunate moment? And who among us has not been able to have a crack at something for no good reason? For me, this was piano lessons. My parents paid for them because I thought I was Mozart. I was not. There is some poor kid out there in some slum who actually is Mozart - but we'll never know.
The counterargument is that in a world where the dice are loaded, the closest we get to pure meritocracy is sport. To which I say, "Utter tosh, old trout" and point to the British gold medal winners from this year's Olympics. The dice are always loaded and strange selections help reveal this.
So I hope to see more oddball picks from Pakistan. They are like that man in the tight pink suit. Probably a mistake; rather inappropriate; almost certainly in the wrong place at the wrong time; but you just can't help watching for what happens next.
source:
