Let there be cricket

It was Pakistan’s 1977 tour to Australia that the tale was born to be a folklore. Majid Khan was a class apart; grace, majesty and a seeming abandon with a dismissive flourish. Australia had had a good measure of him in his previous tours when he had scored his hundreds with the same careless abandon despite facing what was then the world’s best pace attack in Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. Gentleman to the core, lavishly gifted for both style and a refined rounding of top education, he impressed many with his poise including the opposing teams. Otherwise immaculately dressed on the field, he wore a beat-up threaded hat — he batted and fielded in the same hat. No helmets — gentlemen don’t wear helmets to the crease; these came much later.

In Sydney then Dennis Lillee was on fire; he had already taken a few wickets but Majid who opened the innings with Sadiq Mohammad was still around and had hooked an increasingly frustrated Lillee for a couple of sixes over the boundary. That is when Lillee walked up to him and said, “I am going to knock off that darn hat of yours.” To explain to the uninitiated, a fast bowler worth his salt would endeavour to make his delivery rise from a pitch to aim at a batsman’s head. Lillee could do that and that is what he was threatening Majid with. Majid offered him the hat if he could as much as touch it than blow it off with the ball. And this in a Test match, remember.

Perhaps Majid dispatched Lillee for another one or two as Lillee aimed to knock Majid’s hat off. Lillee finally bowled one that rose and disturbed Majid’s hat on the head; first askew, which then simply dropped off Majid’s head. What did Majid do? Walked up to Lillee and presented his hat to him. Lillee bowed and accepted it. This was then a gentlemen’s game and gentlemen played it. And if memory serves me right it was turned into a more formal event after the match when a proper presentation of the hat was made by Majid to Lillee. It was also during this tour that the ‘great’ Zaheer Abbas — may God grant him health — and Majid Khan together at the crease, in the first session of a Test blasted off a healthy over-100 runs partnership in as much time as one took to go through with the morning routine and breakfast, radio glued to the ear all the while.

Majid Khan was Imran Khan’s inspiration, both cousins, though now Imran lionises his other Cricketing cousin, Javed Burki, in comparison. But belonging to the same family, living together in the same vicinity, only meant they were feeding off each other on their respective paths to greatness. Majid was a known walker; he would walk off if he knew he was out even before the umpire had judged him so — an honourable thing. He never smirked, squirmed or agitated even when he thought that he was wrongly given out by the umpire — no shaking off the head, no pointing at the bat, no essaying his leg position to suggest he was not in line for a LBW decision. He would simply walk away; that was the spirit that gentlemen of the game had long ordained — you took the wrong in stride. He was an ardent adherer of ethics, an epitome of fair-play and grace and collectively added to the spirit of the game. He was a fearless and courageous batsman but also a mentor to millions of the character that games endowed humans on the Cricketing fields. Lillee to this day holds on to the shreds of the hat, now long wasted with time and displays it prominently among his trophies. Such are the men who are eulogised in history; men of character — honesty, integrity and grace.

That brings me to the umpires. Neutral umpires came into the game of Cricket in the 1990s courtesy a campaign by Imran Khan. Before then it was always the home team whose umpires officiated in a match. This rule applied from the local club to the highest form in a Test match and none agitated even when he felt aggrieved by a partial decision. You were taught to respect the umpire and honour his decision even if he seemed biased or patently wrong. At schools and clubs teachers or the coaches officiated as umpires and based on how one had gone along in the class with the teachers or at the club with the coaches one could be given out the moment anything brushed past the pad regardless of where the leg was. Or if one was in the good books and went along well with an umpire you were sure to find reprieve. But when told you walked off to grind on. That was the spirit of the game.

This was a classic lesson in character building. When you appoint an arbitrator — courts and commissions, judicial or others including ones dealing with elections, or the ‘umpires’ — you walk off even if seething, agitated, wronged and immensely angry. You don’t dig the pitch to stop the game. You learn to contain the sentiment. You don’t abuse the umpires or take them on for the wrong you feel was done to you. You uphold the ethos and the spirit of the game. Cricket must live. That’s character; that’s the nature of the game.

Don’t get me wrong. I know how IK feels but this is what the ‘playing fields of Eton’ have inculcated their wards with — character and its ability to show through adversity. Sometime one must judge and quickly — the more you delay greater is the muddle and murkier the circumstances. What could have been neat and clean embroils you in the dirt. A lone warrior is hounded always by a pack of hyenas. They never contest you alone; they will gather their ilk and first isolate you, harangue, and then make you helpless. There is a moment when you must recognise the hyenas will have the upper edge — for that moment, never in perpetuity — it is time then to deny them their lone purpose to injure and make you writhe in anguish and pain and hurt you by their heinousness. Walk off. Deny them their dirty moment. Why mix with the hyenas. This is for IK the man, not the politician. It is at moments such as these that men turn into legends.

Politics may be war but a war with rules just as sports is a contest with rules. Just that the stakes are higher and you are dealing with the sublime. The need for innate ethics and character is thus far greater than any sporting contest. Here you have the keys to the treasury and the power to express yourself. You also shape the society. What bigger purpose may a man find than this. Just as the rise is stupendous the fall is even greater and hurtful. But this is what sport, especially Cricket, trains you for — hold head high, walk off and be ready for the next one. We don’t dig the pitch nor take the house down. There will be another innings. The game must go on. Let there be Cricket.

My editor on these pages beat me to this theme with his brilliant article of June 28, 2022 in this space. I still dared to venture on with the hope that this too may be worthy. We agreed to let the readers decide.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2022.

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