Non-stop cricket taking heavy toll on players

As I write this, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will meet in the final of the Asia Cup. I cannot imagine a worse time of the year to be playing cricket in Dhaka. And every penny earned by the players will have been earned. They should have also been entitled to a hardship bonus. Even the comic relief provided by Rameez Raja playing the bongo drums for the benefit of television audiences did not help, but merely confirmed my worst fears that cricket itself has become a side-show. Rameez was playing the drums while the match, an India-Pakistan match no less, was in progress, and I half expected Sunil Gavaskar who was seated next to him, to get up and start dancing. The television commentators are being made to earn their fees the hard way.

Unless international cricket fixtures are rationalised, this non-stop cricket, irrespective of weather conditions, will exact a heavy toll on the players. The organisers are not bothered because they are raking in the money. Just consider the programme of the Pakistan team. After a gruelling tour of Australia, they plunged into a one-day and Test series against Sri Lanka. They then proceeded to Sharjah, almost from the ground. From Sharjah to the West Indies and from West Indies to Dhaka and as soon as the Asia Cup is finished, they will be on their way to Sri Lanka for a Test and one-day series in heat and humidity, probably worse than that of Dhaka. I will need to be convinced that this hectic itinerary is good for cricket. Clearly the cricket boards believe with Blake that "the road to excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom. For we will not know what is enough unless we know what is more than enough".

The match-fixing scandal did not cast its shadow over the Dhaka Cup. Though I would imagine that it must have been on the minds of the players. But it certainly did not lessen the enthusiasm of the Dhaka crowds, nor indeed did the weather. To sure, they must have been disappointed that their own team was brushed aside and Pakistan made up for their "freak" loss in the 1999 World Cup with a vengeance. But Bangladesh need not be discouraged. When they get test status, as they almost certainly will, they will discover that test cricket is an even harder game. But they have to stay with it and I am convinced that is only a matter of time before they will be competing on less one-sided terms. The talent is certainly there but they need to play more cricket outside their own country. That's the sort of exposure they need and it is upto Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka to nurse Bangladesh along. I find the prospect of having four test playing countries in South Asia an exciting one. I am a great believer in regional cricket and we should explore the possibility of more exchange of teams at various levels of the game.

But, in Pakistan, not even the convincing win against India, has taken our minds off that riveting Test match in the home town of Sir Vivian Richards. It was certainly one of the most exciting Test matches in living memory and, perhaps, the fairest result would have been a tie. But there is no doubt in my mind that if one team deserved to win, it was Pakistan. It is true that they goofed-up two run-outs, which were sitters, but who is to say that the umpires would have given them out? I realise that this is a very harsh thing to say but I genuinely believe that the umpiring, certainly from one end, was pre-planned. The home umpire was not going to give Jimmy Adams out caught behind, as he was plainly caught behind, even Michael Holding said so on television, but it was the New Zealander Cowie who made the biggest gaffe of all. There was not even the shadow of a doubt that Walsh had been caught cleanly by Imran Nazir off bat-pad. I think the mistake that the Pakistan team made was to appeal for the catch. They should simply have assumed that being a clean catch, the batsman was out and the game finished. The onus would then have been on the umpire to have called the fielders back.

I thought Moin Khan handled it well. He did not harp on the umpiring and simply praised both teams, his own and the West Indies for a wonderful Test match. I think he made a lot of friends for Pakistan cricket and God knows we have need offriends. But both teams played top-grade cricket and none more than Wasim Akram. This was vintage Wasim Akram. He was certainly fired up, sending a message to all of those, mainly his dedicated detractors of whom he seems to have many, that far from being finished, the best has yet to come. He has been and still is the best left arm fast bowler cricket has ever known. He is two short of 400 Test wickets, he is already past the 400 mark in the one-day version of the game. He is on the threshold of a stupendous achievement. He looked intense and focused, as if he had something to prove. May be he did but the West Indian batsmen can rightly complain: why prove it at their expense? Pakistan may have lost the series but they won the hearts even of a cynical cricket public that does not take kindly to Pakistan losing.