Soap Opera Season

The dope scandal around its best bowlers sends Pakistan cricket into another tailspin. Two months of turmoil threaten to derail the team.

PICTURE SPEAK

CHURN AROUND: Younis & Woolmer (far left); Asif & Shoaib (above)

Where many countries might still be introspecting about becoming the first to forfeit a Test, Pakistan swiftly moved on. Ball-tampering and evil umpires were brushed aside, and a three-day preparation camp for the Champions Trophy materialised.

On the first day, Younis Khan, veteran captain for all of four days, muttered about being a 'dummy' captain and walked off, leaving the captaincy to Mohammad Yousuf. On the second day, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Shaharyar Khan followed Younis's lead and resigned. The final day of the camp saw Dr Nasim Ashraf take over as the head of the board and Younis re-installed as captain. And Greg Chappell and John Buchanan thought their preparation camps were out-of-the-box.

Hardened Pakistanis shrugged it off. Pakistani captains and Board chairmen, historically, have been useful precisely because they can be easily replaced so why worry? But with Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif dramatically being called back to Pakistan before their first Champions Trophy game for testing positive in a PCB-initiated dope test, much of the comedy drained out of the situation. Suddenly, two years of Inzamam-ul-Haq-Bob Woolmer instigated calm was blown away in two months.

PICTURE SPEAK

By acting so quickly and publicly so early in his tenure new PCB Chairman Nasim Ashraf has set a marker

Both have denied taking the substance willfully but evidence against them isn't pretty. Nandrolone builds muscle and helps rehabilitation from injury; both have in recent time bulked up their bodies considerably (in fairness, they are devoted gymmers) and each has only recently returned from injuries. Further, rumours of possible substance abuse have hovered for some time around Shoaib's name like an unpleasant smell. Much to the administration's annoyance, he has regularly shunned PCB doctors for his personal medical attention. Medical opinion tentatively suggests it could still be one big inadvertent error, a combination of mislabeled supplements, herbal remedies and ignorance on the part of both men. That is expected to be their line of defence.

The tribunal will decide the future of both and thus Pakistan's prospects. But at 31 and with a body as fragile as Indo-Pak relations, for Shoaib, any ban is a serious worry. At 23, for Asif there is physical hope. Yet only a guess can be hazarded at the mental scarring from such shenanigans. For now, Pakistan adjust to life without either, though as a thrilling opening win against Sri Lanka showed, they are at least used to it. Shoaib and Asif have only played a handful of ODIs together. The former was absent while Asif toiled domestically for much of 2005, during the team's resurgence. To pretend though that the absence of such key bowlers will not eventually take its toll at some point is as foolish as imagining In the Line of Fire to be a literary classic.

Pakistan remains in a bizarre, cheery shock. Never has cricket been on the front pages of newspapers as regularly as it has these last months, or indeed the subject of so many editorials. The Karachi-based daily Dawn suggested that the latest scandal "had the potential to debilitate the side for months to come," and that the team "would have to live with a brand new taint". With customary balance, it also reminded readers that the possibility that the two players had unwittingly taken the substance should not be ruled out. The News put on a brave face, enthusiastically championing the PCB's bravery in handling the situation publicly while also arguing that "Pakistan cricket is strong enough to weather such storms."

Not that the PCB's new administration needed cheerleaders; they were busy patting their own backs publicly the very same day. Dr Ashraf said immediately, the lead his board had taken in the matter had been widely and deservedly praised. Still, it didn't stop the habitual lashing they receive from ex-players.

Admittedly, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad would find fault even if the board single-handedly dragged Pakistan into the developed world but the former questioning the timing of the tests held some merit. Especially since Shaharyar Khan, recently deposed as chairman, admitted to an Indian news channel that Shoaib had been under suspicion for several months; why then had action not been taken earlier? Miandad blamed the Pakistan management for not playing a more active role in rooting out the problem earlier.

The new chairman won't mind much. A close associate of the Patron of the Board, Pervez Musharraf-who happens to also run the country-Ashraf has been brought in, like his predecessor, to clean up the board. They are keen, in the words of one official, "to clear up the muck left by the previous administration".

Mushtaq Ahmed, recently hired as assistant coach, was quickly nudged out; anything from his past involvement in match-fixing to rumours that the President is keen to dampen the team's religious inclinations were cited as unofficial reasons. But muck doesn't come any muckier than a doping scandal. By acting so quickly and publicly so early in his tenure, Ashraf set a marker.

Matters are unlikely to settle there. The new chairman has twice, unprompted, reiterated in press conferences his full faith in Woolmer as coach till the World Cup. The more cynical among us would say kisses of death don't come much deadlier. Rumours of discontent between coach and captain surfaced after The Oval and those between some board officials and the coach have forever been around. And if Woolmer is more than a little bewildered, who could blame him?

But such a critical change, so close to the World Cup: surely that is too fantastically self-defeating, beyond even Pakistani strands of logic? It would make for great drama though, the kind Pakistan lives for, and with Ms Kapoor on board, well who knows?

The author is editor, Cricinfo Pakistan

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