The Netball caper

One of the titbits of good news for us Pakistanis was that our women’s youth netball team had won second place in the world. It was something of a surprise because frankly, for while our netball team was no doubt kind to animals, had the right views on Palestine and was happiest among their books, was not exactly worldbeaters. So the news was not just welcome but a surprise.

But then things got complicated. The netball association asked the Pakistan Sports Board to encourage the players by giving them a cash reward/ I don’t know why, but the Board’s Ministry, the Ministry for Inter-Provincial Coordination, asked the International Netball Federation for confirmation. And the truth came out. Pakistan hadn’t won. It had come sixth.

Well, for starters, there was no cash reward. But what needs to be made clear is how the IPC Ministry feel the need to ask for confirmation. Did someone notice that there was no attached confirmation from the Netball Federation on file and feel the need for ‘filling the belly of the file,’ as they say? Or was there dirty work at the crossroads, and was one of the players was suborned not to throw a game but to make a full confession? If that is what happened, I would suspect someone who wants to take control of the federation but who is these days out in the netball wilderness.

Or maybe someone just plain talked too much. You must remember that netball is a women’s sport, and not just the team but the officials and team management were all women, and while it was also necessary that all the Pakistan contingent be in on the secret and committed to guarding it, it was asking for too much to ask so many women to keep quiet about such a thing.

Frankly, I think the cash awards were being demanded by at least some team members as the price of silence. I would also think that the entire contingent had led a very sheltered life.

I mean, what possessed them to imagine that they would get away with it. I am reminded of one of those old caper movies, usually a heist from a museum, which involves invisible infrared sensors which have to be avoided lest they set off an alarm.

You know, if Lolllywood would like to make a movie about this bizarre episode, it would be best made as a caper movie. They could throw whatever dance they wanted into the middle of the losing scene. Of course, getting Lollywood to put some actual netball into the movie would be an achievement in itself. The focus of the story could be the fax from the INF. It would be in an office protected by infrared sensors. And the team would have to use their awesome netballing skills to grab it…

Movies, indeed all fiction, require what the critics call the ‘suspension of disbelief.’ The contingent which claimed to have won must have done so with just such a suspension. They must have known they would be caught out.

Just imagine if a cricket team came back, claiming they had won the World Cup, but were unaccountably shy about displaying the cup. Is the PTI claim of having won the 2024 election of the same nature? Well, the claim has also been raised by a sportsman.

These days, Lollywood is busy saving itself. Not from irate crowds disappointed at the sort of films being made, but from the floodwaters. It might not be the worst monsoon to have ever fallen, but it’s the first since India suspended the Indus Basin Waters Treaty.

It’s been pretty bad. But so far we’ve not been honoured by the presence of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Wellington boots. Can we claim there has been monsoon flooding without them? Well, the several hundred people so far who have died might beg to differ. But India has been waterbombing us by releasing floodwaters into the rivers.

The worrisome aspect is that the floods are both worse than usual and have got India trying to be funny. In a way, it’s unfair. Why should Punjab farmers, entire villages have to lose not just their crops and livestock, but even their lives, because of the Indian Air Force’s incompetence?