Last
week, I was reading The Economist 28 November - 4 December 2015 Edition and it has an article about Cricket in USA which has some interesting
fact for a cricket fans. As we know this cricket is developed in England so
first international match should also be played by them but it was not England
who played first international contest. Quoting Economist, "cricket first
international contest played among two countries which now hardly play the game
were America and Canada. This match was held in New York over 3 days (3 Day
match) in September 1844. The match draws some twenty thousand (20,000)
spectators, wagers over a 100,000 $ though Canada won by 23 runs. Within a year
the Herald newspaper reported “Cricket was vast progressing throughout the land
in every city; town and hamlet clubs are forming.” USA which host first
international contest now ranked 25th and doesn’t qualify for any
major competition in last decade. Its cricket association has also banned once
by International Cricket Association (ICC).
Comparing
American cricket-baseball situation to Pakistan what is happening to sports in
our country. For example Squash, Hockey, Football and Olympics board but what
they did to cricket in America was cruel to abandon a sport like that but for
them it has lesser opportunity cost. It seems that baseball got all the cricket
attention in the states as it fame dated back to 1860’s when semi-pro national
club team surfaced. This may be something to do with format of cricket at that
time as five or four day match were too long and also not result oriented
format as current formats like One-days (ODI) or twenty 20 are. Another reason
may be because cricket is purely an English sport and US remained a part of British
Empire so may be after independence it is good to play your own sports as a
sign of rejecting imperialism. As cricket dried up in US overtime but baseball
which captured it space is doing great as Major League Baseball (MLB) now worth
$36 billion as of march 25th, 2015, according to Forbes.
As
in Pakistan every sport except cricket is in lower ever position both in
ranking and management. Hockey is currently overhauled after drastic
performances and was not able to qualify for Olympics and will also be playing
world cup qualifier. Pakistan is record holder team in both Olympics level and
world level. Political influence and incompetent appointment has major
contribution in hockey deterioration.
Pakistan
Football Federation! Don’t even talk about it. Two politicians (Ex-Ministers), who
have no value at national level politics from last 6-8 years, had made
federation their own kitty. Both were fighting over it by tampering federation
election and originating executive orders stamped by high government officials and
then dragging each other to court. In between all the mess both were claiming
as president and wrote letters to FIFA informing about their presidency
positions. Thanks God, we are too low in ranking that no one in international
circuit bothers about this mess and fortunately in the same month FIFA top
officials were also booked by FBI over corruption charges.
Squash,
do we still play it on professional level? Squash which we ruled over four
decades and produced legend like Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan. Both retained the
world no 1 spot for 94 and 97
months respectively and in total we retain No. 1 spot for 216 months after recording starts
i-e 1975. Pakistan also ruled British Open for 29 years in total. After
Jansher Khan lost PSA World No 1 spot in 1993, its 22 years and still counting
that someone from Pakistan will reclaim it and he was also the last one to won
British Open Championship in 1997 for Pakistan and was runner-up the following
year. Seriousness of Pakistan Squash Board is evident from its strategy as
these legends all belong to one village and all current top players are from
Peshawar and seems like its KPK official sport. The village from which all
these legends hail from doesn’t even has a squash court.
Pakistan ranking in different
sports as of 5 December 2015;
If
America stops playing cricket and it association has become corrupt so people
changes its focus to other sports and they are all doing well in it. But here
almost all board have reported financial irregularities and the main sport left
is cricket in which we are also struggling in two formats that is ODI and T20.
The mismanagement of player by their boards is major issue in Pakistan sports.
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