SHOAIB MALIK'S BOO-BOO
Mike Ghouse, September 25, 2007
Sachin Tendulkar, the Master Cricketer is liked by one and all, whoever understands and loves cricket loves him. He is simply the best that there is and a legend to emulate for generations to come. His religion does not matter to any one, his play does.
Shoaib Malik, Captain of Pakistan Cricket team has all the
potentials to be one of the best on the field, and he is
equally liked by all. However he has annoyed many a Cricket
fans by singling out his fans, rather shamelessly.
He should have thanked the people of Pakistan for getting him
up there that is the norm for any player to thank his nation.
However thanking Muslims of the world is dead wrong for many
reasons, three among them:
1)By appreciating his fans on the basis of religion is wrong.
That simply excludes all other fans who are not Muslims. That
is not sportsmanship.
2)Most of the Muslims around the world may not even know
Cricket, let alone him.
3)Like all other Cricket fans of India or the world, he may be appreciated by Indian Muslims also for his skills, but they are no fan of him when they have their own national team they cherish and support.
3)Like all other Cricket fans of India or the world, he may be appreciated by Indian Muslims also for his skills, but they are no fan of him when they have their own national team they cherish and support.
I lost respect for yet another Cricketer, former skipper of
India ’s team Azharuddin. He was corrupt and got caught,
instead of being ashamed of his own acts; he claimed he was
singled out because he was a Muslim. That is a total abuse of
one’s religion to earn sympathies; he did not get any from
Muslims or others.
The act of Shoaib Malik is his own and he should bear
responsibility for that. Cricket and Religion don’t go
together. We ask all the Cricketers to play a good game, they
can thank God and their nation for it, but they should never
exclude any fan from appreciation.
Mike Ghouse, Former President of North Texas Cricket League,
Winner of International Award from MCC for the best overall
Cricket Development the America's.
Don't mix Cricket with religion, urge fans
25 Sep 2007, 2122 hrs IST , TNN
New Delhi : For millions of fans around the world, and India
in particular, cricket itself is a religion -- the Twenty20
version being the latest denomination.
So when Pakistani cricket team’s skipper Shoaib Malik brought
a communal hue to the gentleman’s game with a gratuitous
thanks to Muslims all over the world, ostensibly for
supporting Pakistan, the blowback on the blogosphere was
swift.
The first reaction came from Pakistanis themselves. "How about
Hindu and Christian Pakistanis in the US, Canada, and Gulf who
supported the Pakistan cricket team? Don’t we count?" wrote "ChristianPak"
on the blog Pakistaniat.com .
Others thought the remark was thoughtless and gratuitous
considering the Pakistan team itself has had a token
representation of a couple of Hindus and a Christian in the
past.
It also does not sit well with Pakistan's current attempt,
arguably feeble, to present a face of "enlightened moderation"
prescribed by its military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
But what rankled many Indians was Malik's attempt to own
worldwide Muslim sentiment for Pakistan when India has as many
Muslims who support their home team, which has always had a
healthy representation of Muslims and other minorities and has
been a showcase for India's secular society.
The same holds true of Sri Lanka and England, whose teams are
also multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and secular.
While the charitable explanation for Malik's remarks was that
he was trying to pre-empt an Islamist backlash at home and did
so with poor command of English, the general feeling was he
unwittingly revealed the growing radicalisation of the
Pakistani cricket team, consonant with Pakistan’s own slide
into fundamentalism.
The issue most recently came to the fore during the World Cup
in the Caribbean when the mysterious death of Pakistan’s coach
Bob Woolmer was linked to his disquiet over the radicalisation
of the team and overt expression of religion in team meetings.
"The problem here isn't the syntax, it is the sentiment. I
don't expect Shoaib Malik to be a politically correct
intellectual, but it is reasonable to expect him to know the
world of cricket that he inhabits," cricket historian Mukul
Keshavan observed on his blog, pointing out that it is a world
where Muslims, Hindus and a Sikh currently play for England,
where Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and a Hindu play for Sri
Lanka, where Hashim Amla turns out for South Africa, where a
Patel plays for New Zealand, where Muslims, Sikhs, Christians
and Hindus play (and have always played) for India.
"Why would Shoaib think, then, that the Muslims of the world
were collectively rooting for the Pakistan team or that they
felt let down by its defeat? Did he stop to think of how
Danish Kaneria, his Hindu team-mate, might feel hearing his
Test skipper all but declare that the Pakistan team is a
Muslim team that plays for the Muslims of the world?,"
Keshavan asked, adding, "It is one thing to be publicly
religious-Shahid Afridi thanked Allah and Matt Hayden and
Shaun Pollock are proud, believing Christians - quite another
to declare that your country's cricket eleven bats for
international Islam."
But the incident did not come as a surprise to many cricket
fans, who pointed out on blogs that religious fervor has been
part of Pakistani cricket ever since it resumed engagement
with India in the late 1970s.
Ahead of the Twenty20 final clash, Pakistani newspapers made
overt references to the final being held during Ramzan and
predicted victory over India because it was the holy month,
noting also that Pakistan’s World Cup victory in 1992 had also
been achieved during Ramzan
