The Dawn Blog » Blog Archive » I delivered that no-ball by Ahmer Naqvi

The misfortune of Pakistan is that its tragedy appears as farce.

Over the past few years, our screens have been awash with images both gruesome and depressing in equal measures. And they have been punctually followed by television anchors and television politicians blaming India, Israel, CIA, NASA and any other bogeyman you can think of – as long as the perpetrators weren’t one of us.

Each time, amidst the despondency, I would find myself laughing at such incredulous claims. When, I would wonder, will such people face up to the brazen facts?

Over the past 48 hours, one of the greatest passions of my life has witnessed a sickening turn of events.

And since then, people have asked one of Pakistan’s largest religious communities – the cricket-fans – when will you face up to the facts?

After Bangalore 1996, Lord’s 1999, after the Qayyum Report and the player revolts, after everything that has happened, how could we still be shocked?

After all, for the most part, the players have always been corrupt, the board has always been dysfunctional, the system has been abused to the point where it is nothing but abusive – how did we not see this coming?

As I asked myself this question, I realised I was no better than those TV hosts and politicians I mocked – just like them I had always found someone else to blame.

It’s the unfair pay-cheques, the IPL bans, the lack of education, the War on Terror, the colonial prejudices.

So I decided to blame the greedy players, the short-sighted administrators, the extractive system.

But love has this way of denuding you and your rationalisations. And my love of cricket asked me – when will you blame yourself?

Myself? How am I to blame?

I whizz past red lights while forwarding a text about the laws broken by the government.

I feast myself silly on all-you-can-eat-buffets, and yet I cringe at the greed of those boys.

I glower at my sister’s slipping dupatta as I leave for a night out, and still its the hypocrisy of Amir’s sajda at Lord’s that rankles me.

I shame Hollywood celebrities for their apathy towards the floods, when no amount of disasters slices me as much as a bunch of young men dropping some catches.

I curse the bus-driver when his swerving makes me miss my turn for the mosque.

I am someone who is in denial of the wrongs I commit.

I must be someone who is the change I wish to see.

This article was published on The Dawn Blog.

DAWN.COM | Cricket | Ponting ponders in “The Captain’s Year”

COOLUM, Australia: Flipping through the pages of Ricky Ponting’s new book, there’s nowhere in a 10,000-word chapter devoted to the forthcoming Ashes series that the Australia captain predicts a 5-0 whitewash over England.

For good reason: Ponting says quotes attributed to him last week to that effect were a big stretch.

“Don’t believe everything that you read,” Ponting said, smiling, during the launch of “The Captain’s Year,” his eighth book. It came during a player camp at a five-star resort north of Brisbane that included all 25 contracted players and Cricket Australia personnel.

Ponting said he was asked last week whether another 5-0 series win was possible, a feat Australia achieved in 2006-07 when it regained the Ashes at home after losing the previous series in England in 2005.

“There are five games to play, so anything is possible,” Ponting said Monday. “If we play our best cricket for every minute of every Test match, then there is a possibility we could do that. But I never said we were going to win 5-nil.”

Ponting and the Australians are preparing for a two-Test, three limited-overs matches tour of India, a home series with Sri Lanka and then the five-Test Ashes before the World Cup next year.

“We’re expecting a very high level of performance for the next eight months,” Ponting said. “The expectations are that we will be ultra-competitive in every match we play.”

To do that, Ponting said the team will have to overcome a series of batting collapses that saw quick wickets fall and matches given away, first at Lord’s and then The Oval during last year’s series won 2-1 by England.

The Australians were also out for low scores against West Indies in Perth last year, then against Pakistan in Sydney in January and most recently at Headingley in England in July.

“Looking back at the Ashes series, it was probably the major reason we didn’t win that series,” Ponting said. “When England got on a roll with the ball we weren’t able to stop that.”

Ponting said the team has been more consistent since, and has more experience.

“We have been able to adapt and adjust to different game situations a lot quicker than we probably did last year,” Ponting said. “And if you look at the makeup of our team, we had quite a few reasonably inexperienced players in that side.

“Now, 12 months down the track, they have played another 10 or 12 Test matches, and they should be able to understand the situation a lot better.”

Ponting was careful to respond to a question about England’s players reportedly being banned from using Twitter and other social networking sites during the Ashes.

“I think the job of all international players these days is that if we can bring people closer to the game with that kind of information … bring people through the gates, then that’s good,” Ponting said.

“It’s the helmet-on, helmet-off, sort of stuff. Very few people around the world know what we’re like with the helmet off. I’m totally for that, as long as it’s done in the right way. You won’t see us banning our players.”

Ponting makes that point in his book, where he includes numerous Facebook entries he’s made during the last year. None of them are particularly earth-shattering, some of them are a plug for his sponsors, but every now and then he’ll talk about an injury or why he chose to bat first after winning a toss.

He also included a chapter entitled “The Best of the Best” – his highlight reel of players he’s faced in the past decade.

His top-order batsmen are Virender Sehwag of India and South Africans Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis. The middle order is veteran stars Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara.

The all-rounder is Andrew Flintoff of England, the pace bowlers Curtly Ambrose of West Indies, Wasim Akram of Pakistan and South Africa’s Shaun Pollock and the spin bowler all-time top Test wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan.

Ponting pays Flintoff a compliment, then takes it away.

“Freddie Flintoff was one of the most talented cricketers I saw during the past 10 years,” Ponting wrote. “However, I can’t help thinking he should have achieved more than what he did.”

The five-Test Ashes series begins on Nov. 25 in Brisbane, followed by matches starting Dec. 3 in Adelaide, Dec. 16 in Perth, Dec. 26 in Melbourne and Jan. 3 in Sydney.

Ponting lamented the fact that he’s been so busy with cricket business he hasn’t been able to play the championship Hyatt Regency golf course outside his door and which hosts the Australian PGA tournament each year.

The single handicap golfer said he hopes to get out on the final day of the team’s stay at Coolum, but realises why he’s here.

“It’s been mentioned that I’ve been the only captain in the history of Australian cricket to lose two Ashes series,” Ponting said.

“I’m going to do my absolute best to make sure that it’s not three.” —AP

This article was published in Dawn.

We’re working on acquiring this book in Pakistan. You may send your orders / queries to info@libertybooks.com. In the meantime, feel free to browse through our complete collection at http://www.libertybooks.com

The Dawn Blog » Blog Archive » Murder will out by Shyema Sajjad

A judicial executioner, someone whose job description in simple terms requires him to kill, covers his face when he carries out a death sentence. The reasons for this vary from law to law, but one thing is for certain, no executioner would probably want his face displayed each time he drops the rope. I am not sure however, if this sentiment applies to the angry Pakistani mobs who have boldly taken to the streets to burn, beat and kill anyone who may have allegedly done something wrong. Hiding faces or identities is not even necessary here where even the men in uniform have been clearly caught on camera amidst these barbaric mobs.

Without sounding clichéd, I feel the desperate need to reiterate that there is something terribly wrong with our society as a whole. What happened last Sunday in Sialkot was not an isolated event. We have watched police and public alike beat people up in the name of crime, blasphemy, feuds and personal vengeances. Starved for entertainment, we record videos of people being beaten to death. Insensitive of emotions, we gaze at the camera and then turn our eyes back to the spectacle at hand – the murders in the process. Ignorant of the law, we feel invincible as we pass on the sticks and stones – accessory to murder. Oblivious of our crime, we dust our hands and go back home – pass on the story while we walk around the area. Not bogged down by the weight of what we witnessed, we fall asleep – peacefully.

Educated or not, exposed or not, well-aware or not – there can’t be anyone in Pakistan today who feels that public lynching and communal murders can be justified in any way – granted we are a selfish nation, but the floods and terrorism have already taken away thousands of our fellow citizens, do we really want to allow barbarians to take down a couple more?

Those boys deserved a judicial case and then appropriate punishment if any of the initial claims against them committing robbery were true. The bandits burnt to death in Karachi’s Lyari area deserved time in court and then in jail too. The Hindu boy beaten to death in a Korangi factory deserved the same and so did the two Christian brothers publicly tortured to death in Sialkot. What superiority complex do we as a society have that we feel it is okay for us to pass out and then carry out death sentences ourselves? How are we wired any differently than other nations where we watch such things happen and still have the will to go on strong the next day?

I do not believe in generalisation and I do not believe that each member of the police force is a cold-blooded, ethic-lacking, duty-abandoning façade of an official. However, that being said, I still can’t salute the force which accommodates men who watch murders take place in broad daylight without taking any action. Unfortunately, the only time I hear myself or someone else praising and lauding the police is when some officials sacrifice their lives while protecting the public. Should we only respect officials after they’ve given their lives – nothing short of that matters? Once again – something very wrong with our wiring.

The Chief Justice has taken notice and the leaders have promised action. Do you believe them? I don’t. But does that mean I will pick up my weapon of choice and march on to launch a massacre – most definitely not. If we had faith in the police and the judiciary, perhaps things would not be as bleak as they are today. Perhaps channelling our collective thoughts into fixing these institutions of our society might be a better idea than sitting home with a heavy heart and empty mind.

Yes such incidents embarrass us as a nation and appal us and cause people like you to make posters and protest, while people like me type an angry note and people like Rehman Malik make false promises. I know my services to this society do not end after I am done writing this and your part does not end after you are done reading this either – so what do we do next?

This article was written by Shyema Sajjad & was published on the Dawn Blog.

The Dawn Blog » Blog Archive » What could not be recovered from the crash site

Just the way you wouldn’t hand weapons to an untrained army, you wouldn’t hand cameras and a press pass to untrained media representatives. However, fact of the matter is that time and time again we are reminded that the latter has been taking place in Pakistan almost constantly.

A country expects its army to protect and defend them and similarly a country expects its media to responsibly broadcast news to them.

What we saw yesterday in the wake of an enormous national tragedy was not responsible reporting. We could not even wait a few hours before we started looking for suspects to pin the blame on. We couldn’t even wait to verify the death toll before reporting that there were 40 survivors. We couldn’t even let a day pass before inviting talk show guests to discuss conspiracy theories. And most of all, we couldn’t even focus on what the language we were using must sound like to a grief stricken nation.

Yes, 152 people died in the Margalla Hills. They perished. Their families are grieving. The rescue teams and media personnel who saw the crash site first hand must also be grieving. But we are a hasty nation. We want results, we want culprits named and we want to suck every emotion and thought out of your mind when we get a hold of you. And for all of that, we will tell you that the black box was found, even though headlines this morning state that is not the case. We can not play with people’s hopes and emotions – how do you even expect a nation to trust you?

Shoving the mic in the faces of crying relatives, the media asked “How do you feel?” How do you think they felt, respected colleagues? What was a reporter thinking when she boasted about running barefoot to be the first one to ‘break the news’ for her channel?

Later at night, news channels could have easily invited weather experts, CAA officials, air force pilots who fly in those areas, geologists to explain the terrain and possibility of survival, and impact experts – what we got instead were officials who discussed the possibility of planes being shot down near the no-go zone.

Anchors harassed Rehman Malik to explain what happened and how the tragedy took place. Why would you ask Rehman Malik this question? I understand he is a government official but he doesn’t even know how security lapses allow suicide bombs to go off everyday, so how would you expect him to explain the technicalities of a plane crash?!

Perhaps we have become used to covering terrorist attacks in the most blatant way possible but we could have shown some sensitivity here. Since there was nothing but debris to show on the screens, cameraman panned the tattered chequebooks and broken make-up kits of the crash victims. Yes, because if I had just been killed in a horrible accident, my family would definitely want to see my belongingness scattered next to my remains.

The pilot of the “doomed flight” is not sitting at home with his family. Neither is he facing an investigation of the accident. He is among the dead too. He has a family too. He was not a terrorist who wanted to take a plane full of people down with him. But we didn’t consider that when we immediately starting pointing out his age, his fatigue and his medical conditions. Even if there was a problem or a mistake at his end, lets wait for CAA and Air Blue’s official statements and investigation results before brandishing him as the one responsible for the tragedy.

Hundreds and thousands of us have travelled this airline before and because of their safe landing, we are sitting in front of our computer screens today. Yet all of a sudden we are complaining on public forums about what terrible landings travellers of the air line have to face. Guess what angry people – tons of flights often have bad landings but you cannot use that excuse to justify what happened yesterday.

I believe we are a curious nation but I do not believe we are an insensitive one. The prayers, the tears and the shock yesterday proved we have emotions – television channels played with those emotions yesterday. They didn’t realise that a mother of a victim was in shock before asking her what her daughter was like in person. They didn’t realise that flashing “honeymoon couple dead” on their tickers, would not be any more hard-hitting that the deaths of all of those who were not on their honeymoon.

I expect illiterate people or unbothered citizens not to read this but the media can and should read this. What are you doing? I may be just a few years old in this field and I may not understand the implications of being in a media rat-race, but nothing can justify what we did yesterday. Instead of giving the nation the sensitive and true reports it needed, we gave them traumatizing visuals and crude commentary.

I have spoken out loud about media ethics before but never have I felt as embarrassed as I do today to be considered a part of this ‘industry’. If any one in a position of authority understands this, take action and train your team. It’ll be the best public service you could do for a nation of lost souls.

Shyema Sajjad is the Deputy Editor at Dawn.com

This article was published on The Dawn Blog.