CITY NOTES
Old cricketers are doing the most interesting of things, but it’s not because they’re interesting, as because the people they’re doing the things to are letting them do so.
Look at Salman Butt, the opener who had been made Pakistan captain, but who flamed out caught telling Amir to do things in accordance with the wishes of the Mombay Bookies, or should we say the Mumbai Matchfixers.
Butt has been given a job as coach of the Singapore national team. Singapore is an ICC Associate member, an aspirant for one-day status, and not yet Test status.
Now Butt has every right to go for the job. He only knows two things, gambling and cricket. He must get a living from one or the other, not being ‘independently wealthy’, as the phrase goes.
He’s a former captain of Pakistan, so he knows cricket, not just as a batsman, but in terms of setting the field and empathizing with bowlers. If it hadn’t been for his brush with the Mumbai Matchfixers, no one would say a word.
But what skills will he be imparting to the Singapore dressing-room? How to carry a hands-free phone in one’s guard? I doubt it, because no one is going to pay Singapore to lose. They will, anyway. And no one is going to bet they will win. They won’t..Not unless the other side fields less than 11.
Salman Butt employed as Singapore coach. Wonder what he will teach them? If any random visitor to the Singapore dressing-room finds the team sitting in a circle playing mang patta. Or maybe flaash.
It’s actually a deadly combination, for Singapore is a majority Chinese country, with 75.9 percent of the population Chinese and Mandarin one of the official languages. (And by the way, another is Tamil, which makes Singapore one of two counties to have Tamil as an official language, the other being Sri Lanka).
Now the Chinese love to gamble. Indeed, they have got a gambling problem. So Salman Butt is going to find himself caught in the middle when the Beijing Bookies want a piece of the action, not to mention the Macao Matchfixers.
And while Salman Butt works out his share of the action (because I’m sure that he has to pass on a share to the Singapore board: its members must have decided they’d never win the World Cup, so they might as well retire rich), Imran Khan must be chortling over the fact that he had a nation of more than 120 million going for a while, and deciding to cancel his sit-in.
Well, that was good news for all of us, not so much because of the fact that clashes were avoided, as because it meant stomachs wouldn’t be upset. He intended to bring three million people to a city with a population of two million, with bathroom facilities to match.
With the weather what it is, both diarrhea and constipation are problems, so while some would have listened attentively to Imran’s harangue, others would have suddenly gone off into the bushes, hoping their stomachs would allow them to make it, while still others would not make it to the speech because their straining had borne no result.
Last time, Parliament and PTV were stormed for no other reason than the need of desperate PTI workers to use their toilets.
Be that as it may, one wonders what happened to the great conspiracy. Has Imran somehow joined it? Or is it simply that the nation showed it did not deserve such a leader by not turning up in sufficient numbers? Or did three million turn up, and we simply didn’t see them? I think that three million were there in spirit. A lot of people didn’t trust their car ACs, and were appalled to learn that there were no facilities at D-Chowk.
Incidentally, this weather makes it even more incredible that the last attempt at a revolt, the 1857 Mutiny, was started in May. Wouldn’t it have been better to have tried in November? That way you can get the whole winter in which to do something.
In those days, there were obviously no ACs, there being no electricity. Instead, people dug great tunnels in the earth, and filled them with snow brought down from Kashmir in the winters. You would use that ice in the summer. You did not organize gatherings above ground.
Imran should realize that people have come once, however many they were, and might prefer to come only in spirit next time. Those who actually went probably are kicking themselves for not doing what everyone else did, and go only in spirit.
