PCB chief Ejaz Butt has the ability to be a motormouth despite having both his feet tucked between tongue and palate
PCB chief Ejaz Butt has the ability to be a motormouth despite having both his feet tucked between tongue and palate There are cricket administrators and then there are cricket administrators, but is there anyone like the current chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board?
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| Ejaz Butt, the controversial Pakistan Cricket Board chief, has made some silly comments |
He has the ability to be a motormouth despite having both his feet tucked between tongue and palate. What you get, therefore, is a dazzling show of non-stop grunt-and-gurgle nonsense.
In the past fortnight, Butt flew down to Delhi ostensibly to pay his salaams to the new ICC president Sharad Pawar in person. Au00a0 telephone call is infinitely cheaper than an airplane ticket but Butt made it sound as if this was established cricket protocol.
Reports of him wanting to revive bilateral Indo-Pak cricket had greater basis in logic. After all, the PCB is broke and, as in the past, the best recourse would be to go to Big Brother for help. But here Butt too was perhaps knocking on the wrong door, for Pawar's writ no longer runs large in the BCCI.
Coincidence It is only a coincidence, of course, that the PCB found itself in the thick of a match-fixing maelstrom and desperately needs the ICC's benevolence, but Butt would have us believe that this issue was not discussed at any length with Pawar. I would have thought that this should have been Butt's single-point agenda for visiting India.
What's more, a few days after leaving Delhi, Butt dived headlong into another controversy. After a London tabloid report had compelled the ICC to put the third ODI between England and Pakistan under scrutiny, the PCB chief alleged to an Indian television channel that he had information about some English players fixing the match!
Media goes overboardPakistan's miff at being under suspicion all the time is understandable. The English media seems to have gone overboard in trying to establish spot-fixing as a malaise primarily afflicting Pakistani players. There is more aggressive sleuthing by media houses than by Scotland Yard and the ICC's Anti Corruption Unit put together.
Butt's bickering, however, reduced cricket's biggest crisis into a trifling tu-tu main-main. It shows how inured Pakistan's cricket establishment is in ignoring the match-fixing problem. Rather than acknowledge it, play the blame game seemed to be Butt's tactic.
This hardly helps the sport. As for his own reputation, Butt may find it hard to fight off charges of buffoonery.
ASK Ricky Ponting today which series is he more eager to win -- against India now or England immediately after -- and he could be in a dither.
The Ashes may be the most coveted cricketing contest for an Australian player, but Ricky Ponting will see the current tour of India as no less important; personally as well and for his team.
Widely regarded as one of the game's greatest batsmen, Ponting's record in India remains poor. On sluggish tracks, runs have come to him in a trickle, not in a torrent, raising some iffs and buts about his status in the pecking order of willow wielders.
Perhaps even more pertinently in the present context, Ponting's captaincy will be under greater scrutiny.
The last time Australia toured India in 2008, he lost the series 0-2. Subsequently the ICC No 1 ranking was surrendered too. At a wobbly number 4 now, Ponting will be seeking revenge and redemption.
How effective Australia will be this time, therefore, depends a great deal on how the captain bats and makes decisions. But MS Dhoni cannot be lulled into believing this series is easy picking just because the Aussies are in the process of rebuilding after the departures of Shane Warne, Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist and therefore a trifle vulnerable. India have managed to stay at the top of the ICC rankings by the skin of their teeth, as it were, over the past year. The next five months -- with series' against Australia, New Zealand South Africa leading up to the World Cup -- will show whether Dhoni's team has the mettle to make their position at the top undisputed.
For India, the batting looks settled on experience and strong on current form, some debate over Yuvraj's exclusion notwithstanding. But heading into the first Test next week, there are several lingering questions about the bowling that could give Dhoni some sleepless nights.
Key factorsHis two main bowlers, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh are both returning from injury, as indeed is Sreesanth. Ishant Sharma, who harried and hustled Ponting no end in 2008, looks short of confidence.u00a0 Spinners Ojha and Amit Mishra have been relatively free of trouble for form and fitness, but their experience is limited.
Home advantage for India, therefore, is nominal which could make this a more keenly contested series than many people anticipate. After the spate of recent unseemly controversies, it might just be the panacea that cricket needs.
