From sports to soaps: How PCB ended up producing the biggest melodrama of 2023

This year, Zaka Ashraf turned our beloved sport into a melodrama

KARACHI:

Dramatic action isn’t the easiest thing to achieve for a writer. While all the writers aim to create quality drama through their scripts, only a handful have the foresight to merge the complexities of the human condition in a way where the beautiful characters on screen end up behaving like people in your living room. 

Television, and in particular soap operas, is the art of making the ordinary look extraordinary and extraordinary the ordinary, which is why any sane person controlled by gravity doesn’t fly off the roof after witnessing Ektaa Kapoor make an empire by pitting heavily decked sanskari Indian women against each other; providing that optimum setting for both future Indian politicians and Indian mass anxieties to be nurtured together.

In Pakistan, however, we have moved on. Unlike Yasir Hussain’s fixation with TV just being a women’s medium, TV has started to look like a men’s medium and men have started to behave like once they thought women who are addicted to TV dramas do; restless, impatient, and full of mood swings with an overt need to say what they truly feel like saying. While achieving gender equality in Pakistan is as much a far cry as the Pakistan cricket team beating Australia in Australia, we have at least achieved what many progressive societies have failed to do: gender osmosis. 

Of course, the term doesn’t exist in any social sciences dictionary but what we are talking about is the ethos with which the 2023 lot plays cricket, honours the emotional value of cutting cakes and giving Christmas presents, only to eventually lose a winnable test on boxing day. We still suck at the game but we aren’t mean to ourselves or others. Carl Jung would say that the modern-day Pakistani cricket team is very much in touch with their feminine side in presenting what was, until the last decade or so, a rough game played in gentlemen’s style.

Thanks to the seamless rise of Tusshar Kapoor’s acting career, we can’t blindly trust Ektaa Kapoor’s vision for men as entertainers. Having said that, a successful entrepreneur and a revolutionary storyteller like her would see a new formula in the Pakistan cricket team, a formula where handsome young men talk about their emotional state round the clock, like the women in her dramas minus the heavy ornamentation and jewellery. 

All that is missing in this classic soap opera is a patriarch with castration anxiety or maybe, imbibing the new-world values, a patriarch also in touch with his feminine side, or to make it clearer, a father who acts like the conventional mother-in-law by ensuring no peace in the household. Or perhaps, it’s not missing at all, given how Zaka Ashraf and, to an extent, Shahid Afridi provided just the right amount of boomer energy to make sure that the cheerful, sensitive, and emotionally open spirit of our team turned into an actual episode of Game of Thrones. 2023 was the year when the father of dragons arrived with no royal secrets, just leaked WhatsApp conversations.

As a child, Zaka Ashraf must be used to overhearing conversations, or be the one teenager to put his ear to the newlywed’s bedroom and wait for the side lamp to fall and then giggle. Naughty, very naughty. But then, all of a sudden, he was given so much power that he thought it was just right to flaunt it when his team, I mean family, was on the brink of being split due to a property feud. Who is responsible for the crises? Is it the father of the family or the newly married son-in-law? Or maybe the son-in-law’s father-in-law?  

Ashraf by-passed the in-laws and law, to single out the unmarried son who everyone was hoping would take the family out of crises. Eventually, Ashraf got shamed for his meddling in personal affairs in both the susral and maika and the family feud eventually led to a divide in the family. 

This reminds us of the Mad King from Game of Thrones who must die for the feuds to turn into proper enmity and for the period soap to move forward. Babar Azam, just like Ned Stark, was sacrificed for the mistakes that were wholly his, for crimes that the entire kingdom must be blamed for. 

Azam’s fanboy cum sidekick, Hasan Ali continued to tread the same path in his limited fashion as Sansa Stark, although Sansa eventually ends up being a lot more useful than Ali. Haris Rauf makes a limited appearance like Khal Drogo whose only role in the entire plot is to be muscular, and feisty till he gets married. Shan Masood, like Joffrey Baratheon, is forced into the rule purely because of his royal abilities and no proven record of leading or even performing in the Test format.

The Afridis, just like Lannisters, play a crucial role in the plot and live near the seat of power. The only good thing about them is their sex appeal and charisma and thankfully, unlike Lannisters, their relationship stops at being that of a son and father-in-law. Rashid Latif, much like Tyrian Lannister, belongs to a similar tribe of influence like the Afridis but has different, more anti-establishment goals.  

Saqlain Mushtaq, like Milsandre the witch, believes in the Qudrat ka Nizam while at the same time backing his candidate Shadab Khan or if we may say, Stannis Baratheon. Both Naseem Shah and Mohammad Rizwan make a strong case for Jon Snow but if Ektaa Kapoor were to pick one, she would prefer Shah for the good looks and Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar would pick Rizwan for his dominant masculinity and the unique ability to face women by showing them their back. 

As Ashraf put the house on fire and turned PCB into a melodrama that got fueled even further by toxic Babar and Shaheen fandoms, I kept thinking what role would Imam ul Haque play in this story. I was waiting for the first test to be over and now we are done with the second one too and the only thing I can say about Imam is that even in an imaginary situation, there is no place for him in this team. The good thing is that he was just like that before getting married, so consistency indeed has been the key for him.

Let’s see what twists the producers of this PCB version of GoT can come up with, in its second season, starting today. Happy New Year! May the team and Iron Throne remain protected from the White Walkers, I mean the Tableegh-i-Jamaat.

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