When our cricket team was seen losing match after match against Bangladesh, the wrath of the whole nation was directed against the players and management of the cricket team. From electronic to social media, the people were venting their anger, aroused by the dismal performance of our cricket team in the series against Bangladesh. Our cricket-crazy nation not only follows the game religiously but also celebrates the good performances of our team with a unique zeal and fervour. In case of a lacklustre performance, the reaction is far more severe and the whole nation plunges into deep despair. The drubbing at the hands of the Bangladeshis in the recent series badly bruised our national ego. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has his own cause-and-effect theory about the dismal performance of our national team. However, it is unfair to blame only the cricketers for their poor performance in isolation from the overall rot that has been setting in in our society for years.
Let me start with my own means of subsistence, that is to say the civil service of Pakistan. Our country was fortunate in having inherited a steel frame for its bureaucracy from the British Raj. Those British-trained civil servants not only provided the much-needed stability but also successfully overcame the initial turbulence arising from partition. The industrial revolution and the subsequent economic transformation of the 1960s were spearheaded by civil servants with a missionary zeal. The quantum of modernisation and industrialisation achieved in the decade of the 1960s has no parallel in our history. We achieved the fastest growth rate in Asia. However, at present, the dysfunctional bureaucracy is not even a shadow of its former self.
Setting aside the mundane, let us move towards the sublime pursuits of life. Music, drama, cinema and poetry have also been in steep decline for quite some time in this ‘land of the pure’. This land produced vocalists like the King of Ghazal Mehdi Hassan, the Malaka-e-Taranum Noor Jehan, and the Shahenshah-e-Qawali Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Their renditions echoed in the length and breadth of the subcontinent and even found audiences in far off lands. Their departure has produced a void that cannot be filled easily in the foreseeable future.
We are least bothered by the demise of our once vibrant and thriving film industry. Great stars like Mohammad Ali, Waheed Murad, Izhar Qazi and Munawar Zareef will be chuckling in their graves about the artistic and cultural apathy of their compatriots. The standard set by iconic actors like Talat Hussain, Abid Ali, Uzma Gilani, Irfan Khoosat and Mohammad Qavi Khan in the sphere of drama is too high for our new breed of artists to match or even copy. The great television and stage humourist, Moeen Akhtar, who brought smiles to our faces with his wit, humour and subtle jokes will be hard to replace in the near future.
Lo and behold! What about our national game of hockey? The three-time Olympians and four-time world champions are now finding it hard to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. The four-time world champion is no more a formidable competitor but a minnow in the hockey field. We witnessed, in-the-not-so-distant past, the hegemony of Hashim Khan, Roshan Khan, Qamar Zaman, Jansher Khan and Jehangir Khan in the courts of squash. At present, we stand nowhere in the international ranking of squash. If my memory serves me well, Muhammad Yousaf was crowned the world champion of snooker in the same year when Pakistan became the world champion of hockey for the last time in 1994. We have perfected the art of regression and our downward journey is all encompassing.
At the cost of being termed nostalgic, let us compare our present political lot with that of the past. Had we been facing similar existential threats in the 1970s, the heyday of Pakistani politics, the response of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mufti Mehmood, Abul-Ala-Maududi, Wali Khan and Asghar Khan would have been quite different. They all knew the art of setting the Thames on fire for a cause they espoused. The present run-of-the-mill politicos are content playing second fiddle to the overbearing establishment. All the crucial matters of security and foreign policy are decided by the military top brass. It may sound nostalgic but the present lot of politicos is no match for the towering personalities and visionary leaders of the past.
The cricket team is just a microcosm of our bedevilled nation. I do not want to defend the poor performance of our team but it should not be treated like a bolt from the blue. The lacklustre performance of the cricket team needs to be analysed in the broader perspective of overall decline experienced by our society in almost every sphere of life in the past few decades. When the quality of everything has drastically gone down, how can we imagine the cricket team performing par excellence? The rot has set in everywhere and hence cricket should not be viewed as an exception.
The author is assistant accountant general, Peshawar