Pakistan deserve better than Butt
If there have been less grateful guests than Pakistan's cricketers, fiction must have created them
London: If there have been less grateful guests than Pakistan's cricketers, fiction must have created them. Charity and sympathy are deserved by the millions ruined and damaged by the monsoon floodwaters, but Pakistan cricket is rapidly becoming a monster only a mother could love.
Who will want a game with them after their latest insult?
South Africa claimed they would go ahead with their proposed series against them in the Gulf, but that was before Ijaz Butt's latest comments — which he had heard from that unimpeachable source, illegal Indian bookies — that England's players were on the take to throw Friday night's ODI at The Oval.
The claims are risible and probably slanderous and are all part of Pakistan moving into their default setting: that of everyone discriminating against them. They need to face facts.
Of all the major cricketing scandals of the past 30 years — ball-tampering, match-fixing, the unexpected death of a coach, drugs, terrorism and the first and only time a Test has been forfeited — the majority of fingerprints found at the scene have been theirs.
Claiming the world is against them is how the ruling class there operate. I have visited Pakistan four times and always found it a beguiling place. The resilience of the people (England's 2005 tour came just a few days after the Kashmir earthquake) and their friendly hospitality have always been memorable features of the place, but they do not deserve the leaders they get, including in this instance Ijaz Butt.
Diversionary tactics
Butt's diversionary tactics have clearly brainwashed the players. Why else would Jonathan Trott's spat with Wahab Riaz at nets before the game get as far as Pakistan threatening not to play Monday's match?
Brinkmanship is a way of life in Asia, but to feel that victimised is due to poor leadership. Yet, for all the solidarity, how must Umar Gul feel now that his chairman has devalued his career-best bowling figures in one-day internationals?
In 2005, when Inzamam-ul-Haq took his team off at the Oval never to return, at least during that Test, Pakistan were well served by Shaharyar Khan, the urbane chairman of the PCB.
With Khan running the PR, the media made Darrell Hair as much the culprit as the Pakistan team.
This time, Butt and Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner to London, have between them turned it into an episode of the Muppet Show with Butt as the Swedish chef.
Most right-minded people would agree with Butt when he says that evidence is thin on the ground for the latest claims being investigated by the International Cricket Council.
Comical spin
But to criticise the ICC for charging the Lord's three, when their deeds matched the words caught on tape in the News of the World's sting, is to spin like comical "Chemical" Ali, the man who riddled while Baghdad burned.
The ICC needs to show its teeth, both with Pakistan players, if found guilty, but also with the board.
The trouble is, it appears out of its depth, events moving too quickly for it to mobilise its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit and satisfy the public mood.
