Adil Najam
Shoaib Akhtar is in the news again.
There is the news about him failing to show up for the Pakistan team’s dope test. This, of course, coming so soon after Shoaib’s earlier dope debacle raises serious concerns. Even more serious are the allegations he has made on the team coach – and since denied by Woolmer – about racist remarks.
None of this is to be taken lightly. But right now I am just not in the mood for heavy writing. So I will leave discussions on this to our readers. Let me share with you instead this video clip I found on YouTube. It turns out its fairly old and has done the email and web rounds already. However, I had not seen it before and I assume there may be others like me out there.
So, enjoy. Here is Shoaib Akhtar unplugged. Singing Kishore songs, smoking, laughing his heart out, and taking friends on a tour of his ancestral village.
I have no idea about the context of this video; if anyone knows, please share.
He sang the song beautifully
btw contradictory to whats being reported by this blog, shoaib has not accused woolmer of hurling racial abuse. we have yet to hear from shoaib on this. the dawn report quotes an unidentified source within the team. i would not be surprised if this story was planted a player who is bitter about not being selected for the world cup.
story is at the following link:
http://dawn.com/2007/02/16/spt3.htm
this is how bad journalism standards are at dawn: the woolmer-shoaib phudda report neither has the name of the reporter, nor does the story contain any comments from the two protagonists. i think woolmer will do a huge favour to pakistanis if he sues the heck out of dawn. hitting the paper where it hurts is the most effective way of teaching the owners and editors a lesson. on the other hand, given our judicial system, i am not sure if judges even know the meaning of the word libel.
i have also noticed that pakistanis tend to accept at face value stories reported by our english papers at. most people dont realize that:
a. most journalists are incompetent fools who turn to the profession because they could not get admission into a professional shoba like medicine, engineering or business. reporting on technical subjects like economy is beyond the capability of pakistani journalists
b. journalism is a very corrupt profession in pak and lots of journalists are on the take. print industry is not very profitable. people in the industry are very poorly paid and have to find means to supplement the income. banks in pakistan dont provide credit to journalists because journalists feel no shame in borrowing money and then not paying it back. other categories of people who are blacklisted by banks include lawyers, politicians and policemen:
http://www.dawn.com/2006/06/18/top9.htm
“…BANK LOANS: National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Hussain referred to privileges committee the matter of non-issuance of car loans and credit cards by banks to politicians, journalists and lawyers…”
rule of thumb i use when reading pakistani newspaper is that i tend to verify facts from multiple sources. if the story is only carried by one paper, i generally tend to disregard it.
interestingly, govt passed a law yesterday which removes restrictions on cross media ownership. i believe this is a bad law because it can lead to cartelization of pakistani media along with creating conflict of interest issues.
I think we so badly want our Cricket players to win on or off the playground that its heart brokening for us to see them losing at anything. If Shoaib wants to use drugs or be a racist its his choice. Our country has lot of talent which is not yet discovered or got a chance to prove it. Our cricket players need to understand that they are playing professional cricket, its not a child’s play.
Well if we see this casual side of Shoaib Akhtar then he does not appear to be a bad person but they way he projects himself on the field its quite the opposite.